DVD.co.uk web search tech grows sales

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DVD.co.uk is boosting customer conversion and sales uplift with its first third party technology investment in time for the busy Christmas trading period.

The e-commerce firm has traditionally developed its own transactional and online retailing website functionality in the five years the business has been in existence, but decided to look for off-the-shelf software when it wanted to improve the search capabilities of the site.

Steve Graham, managing director of DVD.co.uk told IT PRO that search has become a key area of the site, as customers are more likely to go elsewhere if they unable to find instantly what they are looking for.

At the same time, the increasing variety of short, slang or unusual title names made it hard for the company to maintain accurate search capabilities with its homegrown systems.

"The problem was with the search results that our algorithms gave," said Graham. "We found our search capability was struggling with lots of unusual titles, like '24,' 'The O.C.' and 'Pi,' for example. And we were having to hard code those terms to produce the right search results."

DVD.co.uk now uses search engine, optimisation and navigation recommendation technology from Avail Intelligence, recently launched in the UK.

Avail uses advanced mathematical algorithms to track collective intelligence and customer behaviour on DVD.co.uk's website. By using intelligence solely from the previous customer behaviour on the site, this historical information is used to create real-time recommendations for other customers looking at similar products.

"We had to spend a couple of days feeding the search engine with basic information about the catalogue, then a couple of weeks waiting for it to return sufficiently accurate results," said Graham. "But once we put it live [in July this year], it basically takes care of itself."

The fact that the Avail engine also holds its source data within the RAM of the server it is installed on also takes additional pressure off the site's database at the time of year it's likely to be under most pressure from the sheer volume of pre-Christmas shoppers, he added. And 40 per cent more customers now click through an Avail-generated search to find a title in the company's large back catalogue.

"We've also seen an increase of double figures of the number of people buying once on the product page," said Graham. "And the basket size has increased by more than 20 per cent, as a result of the recommendations based on previous shoppers' choices that are presented at checkout."

DVD.co.uk is now considering taking on in the New Year the customer-generated reviews module Avail also offers as part of its portfolio.

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