Smaller e-retailers make their case to value-conscious shoppers, seeking to woo them back from the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon.

Read more at:
https://www.internetretailer.com/2009/09/29/taking-on-the-big-dogs

PetFoodDirect.com, a leading online pet supply retailer announced an immediate 18.2% increase in conversion rates since deployment of Thanx Media’s Endeca On-Demand offering. The decision to upgrade to the best-of-breed search and navigation platform offered by Thanx Media was integral to PetFoodDirect.com’s competitive strategy. According to PetFoodDirect’s Director of Business Development Jay Pusey, Endeca On-Demand eclipsed the competitive product they were using in that it “came at the right price and with the right service offering. Further, it allowed a logical way to get competitive e-commerce features in the short term, while having a longer term product road map for developing our websites.”

Matt Swan, Ecommerce Manager at PetFoodDirect.com elaborated on what he described as a “huge jump in search functionality and merchandising features” that Endeca On-Demand Express offered, “…enabling our customers to drill down by categories” while browsing specialty features and using features such as aggregated records, which allows customers to view products in multiple sizes and add directly to their carts. In addition to an impressive jump in conversion rates, PetFoodDirect.com’s new search and merchandising features have their items per cart figures jumping by 9.6%, and have increased orders per session by 12.25%. Said Jay Pusey, “Not only are we happy with the results, but the process of implementation and the subsequent service offered by Thanx Media has been outstanding. We were impressed with the Professional Services Team’s knowledge of Endeca and their ability to configure it to our needs. With their prompt response to our requests, they made themselves available to us.”

In April 2009, Thanx Media rolled out the Endeca On-Demand Express offering to rival the implementation speed of other mid-market solutions with half the features. It provides Endeca On-Demand’s Guided Navigation and search capabilities in a quick out-of-the-box format to get mid-level merchandisers the best possible user experience for their customers. Thanx Media implements, maintains and hosts the entire Endeca On-Demand platform. Explained Paul Matker, CEO of Thanx Media: “The robust and comprehensive Endeca platform is shaking up the industry with its proven impact, breadth of features, and rich tools. With our Endeca On-Demand offering, we’ve enabled our mid-sized customers to access this high end technology to impact their business quickly without the tax on budget or resources.”

Thanx Media extends an invitation to retailers to receive a free assessment in order to determine which solutions and tools would make the greatest impact on conversion rates and average order values. Contact sales@thanxmedia.com to schedule your free assessment.

About Thanx Media
Thanx Media is an enterprise solutions company that provides integrated solutions for online retailers and online media companies. Founded in 2005 by sales and technology pioneers, Thanx Media offers market-leading solutions that extend the capabilities of e-commerce systems. With the Deliver Commerce Framework, identifying business pains and recommending the appropriate solutions continue to fuel Thanx Media’s growth. These solutions are proven to improve conversion rates, increase revenue per order and boost customer retention. We deliver the unexpected with best-of-breed products, industry best practices and our focused attention to our clients’ business needs. Learn more at: http://txmedia.wpengine.com

About PetFoodDirect.com
PetFoodDirect, Inc. is the leading direct response and pure play e-retailer for pet food on the Internet while also selling supplies, medicine, treats, toys and accessories. Pet owners can find the largest & most extensive selection of pet food and other pet products all conveniently delivered directly to your door via the company’s websites or call center at 1-877-PET-FOOD.

Thanx Media (IRCE booth 731), a leading provider of integrated solutions for online retailers and media companies, announced today that its client, Nebraska Furniture Mart, has seen an double-digit percentage increase in sales since deploying Thanx Media’s Endeca site search and merchandising solution on its online store. The deployment was a key part of a series of recent investments in retailer’s online channel and was a central piece of a recent and on-going website redesign. Nebraska Furniture Mart has also tapped the solution’s Merchandising Workbench tool suite, empowering marketers to quickly self-create new localized content and monetize areas of the site without the need for IT or development cycles. As a result, Nebraska Furniture Mart’s eCommerce team can boost sales and sponsorship revenue while eliminating dependencies on valuable technical resources.

Nebraska Furniture Mart’s site search and merchandising approach offers a cutting-edge example of new applications of ‘searchandising’ – applications that go above and beyond the up-sell, cross-sell and related-products approaches synonymous with search-based merchandising tools. Two examples of the retailers approach include localized content creation and display, as well as brand-specific, search-triggered landing pages.

“The merchandising tools available with the Endeca solution open up a wealth of new tactics we can apply to our multi-channel strategy, and really set it apart from other solutions on the market,” said Jeffrey Douglas, Internet Marketing Manager at Nebraska Furniture Mart. “We’re now evolving and updating aspects of the shopping experience that we never would have attempted in the past, either because they would have been cost or resource prohibitive.”

For example, Nebraska Furniture Mart operates stores in Omaha, Des Moines, and Kansas City. Departments and product lines vary by location. Using the new tools, Douglas and his team created different elements of the online experience that would dynamically appear based on the location of the online shopper. If the shopper is accessing the site from Kansas City market – where the retailer features a high-end design business – distinct products and design services are automatically displayed and prominently promoted on the website.

Another example includes the creation and monetization of brand-themed zones of the online store. Nebraska Furniture Mart’s brick-and-mortar stores feature a Sony Store boutique – a branded store-within-a-store. Using the Endeca Merchandising Workbench, the retailer has been able to create a similarly branded section of the site, thus introducing new means of monetizing virtual floor space in a way that mirrors proven offline merchandising approaches.

“Thanx Media lowered the barrier to entry for adopting and deploying state-of-the-art software without using up our limited IT resources. And they proved to be a great partner in the process,” said Jeff Olson, Senior Programmer/Analyst at NFM. “When you combine best-in-class search with tools like Merchandising Workbench and Site Boost automated SEO, you empower the business while freeing up valuable technical resources to focus on improving other complementary aspects of the multi-channel shopping experience.”

Thanx Media offers an extensive range of Endeca-based offerings and services, including their SaaS Endeca On-Demand hosted site search solution and new Site Boost automated SEO.

“Nebraska Furniture Mart is among our most innovative clients, both in their use of merchandising control and their focus on building a consistent and differentiated multi-channel strategy,” said Paul Matker, CEO of Thanx Media. “Their unique approaches to localization and monetization illustrate the type of value that the Endeca platform can deliver above and beyond state-of-the-art search and navigation. Our goal is to make this technology accessible to an increasingly wide variety of multi-channel and eCommerce operations.”

About Nebraska Furniture Mart:
Nebraska Furniture Mart was founded in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska by Rose Blumkin in the basement of her husband’s jewelry store with a $500 investment. In 1983, Warren Buffett purchased a majority interest in Nebraska Furniture Mart and made it part of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies. In 2006 Nebraska Furniture Mart added the ability to buy online through its web site, nfm.com. Offering furniture, flooring, appliances, electronics and computers, Nebraska Furniture Mart just completed its 72nd year of consecutive growth. Nebraska Furniture Mart continues to maintain it’s tradition of selling cheap, telling the truth, and providing the greatest selection and service.

About Thanx Media:
Thanx Media is an enterprise solutions company that focuses on providing integrated solutions for B2C and B2B online retailers. The Deliver Commerce Framework, which identifies business problems and recommends the appropriate solutions, continues to fuel Thanx Media’s growth. These solutions are proven to improve conversion rates, increase revenue per order and boost customer retention. Thanx Media delivers the unexpected with best-of-breed products, industry best practices and a focused attention to business needs. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, USA, Thanx Media is a private company with North American operations.

Thanx Media, a leading provider of integrated solutions for online retailers and media companies, announced today that its client, King Arthur Flour, has reported a double digit percentage lift in conversion rates and average per search value since deploying Thanx Media’s Endeca On-Demand site search and merchandising solution. The deployment, which came in three phases – recipe information, products and overall site content – is part of a larger web strategy to bring King Arthur Flour’s world renowned recipes, products and baking information to new and existing customers across the country.

Founded 219 years ago, King Arthur Flour is America’s oldest flour company and premier baking resource. The company’s unparalleled reputation with avid bakers has been built upon the quality of its ingredients and related products, such as recipes and cookbooks. Over the past few years the company has sought to translate and extend this tradition through its online channel and store – innovative efforts that have earned recognition from the likes of Internet Retailer magazine, which named King Arthur Flour to its prestigious Hot 100 2009 list of the year’s best retail websites.

“When we set out to bring our wealth of recipes online, we knew that accurate search was critical and that our home grown solution simply wasn’t going to provide the advanced features or results we needed,” said Halley Silver, director of eCommerce at King Arthur Flour. “We needed a solution that could meet the recipe requirements, and quickly be expanded to cover other aspects of the online customer experience without creating new management headaches on our end. Endeca On-Demand gave us a cost-effective way to introduce the cutting-edge features and accurate results we need today on a platform that can quickly scale with our business.”

King Arthur Flour’s search engine retrieves relevant results and offers quick refinement options, tapping Endeca’s signature Guided Navigation capabilities, to help site visitors intuitively ‘narrow’ their search. Unique options make it simple for searchers to sort recipes not just by relevancy but by ‘prep time’ or ‘total time.’ And the search engine helps present visitors with related content from other areas of the site. For example, a search for ‘sourdough’ products returns relevant products and provides quick contextual links to relevant recipes and related site content.

King Arthur Flour measured search success rates using metrics that included per search value, average search value and conversion rates. Searches for the most popular terms and ingredients saw even more dramatic gains.

“King Arthur Flour has a remarkable history, a loyal community of customers, and an innovative web team dedicated to bringing the best of the King Arthur experience to new audiences,” said Paul Matker, CEO of Thanx Media. “They provide a great example of how a smart, small team can rapidly translate cost-effective technology investments into tangible business results.”

About King Arthur Flour
America’s oldest flour company, King Arthur Flour has grown from a regional staple to a brand known nationwide not only for its high-quality flours but for its passion in sharing the joy of baking; from a small mail-order business with five employees in 1990 to the premier baking resource with more than 160 employees today; from a family-owned operation for five generations to a 100 percent employee-owned business. A founding B Corporation, King Arthur Flour was named one of the Wall Street Journal’s Top Small Workplaces and one of WorldBlu’s Most Democratic Workplaces in 2008; and received the Best Place to Work in Vermont Award in 2006 and 2007, the Outstanding Vermont Business Award in 2006, and the Better Business Bureau Local Torch Award for Excellence in 2006. Kingarthurflour.com was named to Internet Retailer’s list of “Hot 100” Web sites for 2009 and is also a finalist in the Multichannel Merchant 2009 MCM Awards. King Arthur Flour offers more than 1,000 professional-grade baking tools and ingredients through its catalogue, online at kingarthurflour.com, and at The Baker’s Store in Norwich, Vt. Through its products, publications and educational programs, King Arthur Flour continues to strive toward its mission: To be a creative and profitable company that’s a product, information, and education resource for, and inspiration to, bakers worldwide.

Thanx Media, a leading e-commerce solutions company, is proud to announce that since launching the Endeca On-Demand platform in 2007, it has continued to experience organizational growth. Thanx Media is the exclusive provider of Endeca On-Demand, a fully managed, fully featured Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering.

With its best-of-breed, market-leading search, navigation and merchandising technology, Endeca On-Demand has enabled Thanx Media customers to exceed their online revenue and retention goals. In 2008, Thanx Media has successfully upgraded more than 35 customers previously using mid-market solutions from vendors such as SLI Systems and Celebros, and helped to displace one major competitor as a result of their solutions. Paul Matker, Thanx Media CEO, explained that customers prefer Endeca On-Demand because they can do more with it.

“Endeca On-Demand is not a limited, vanilla solution like most other on-demand applications. We provide options; some customers love the fast-tailored implementation of the platform, while others use it as an opportunity to enhance all aspects of their sites prior to going live with the Endeca On-Demand solution,” continued Matker. “Our customers have no trouble setting up or tuning the Endeca On-Demand platform; they simply experience very strong long-term results.”

The powerful performance of Endeca On-Demand has elicited favorable responses from several customers, including CableOrganizer.com Marketing Coordinator Juan Ribero. CableOrganizer.com discovered a number of positive results after upgrading from a mid-market site search product to the fully featured, best-in-class Endeca On-Demand offering.

“After switching to Thanx Media and Endeca On-Demand, we quickly generated a 10 percent increase in revenue per search over our old search engine. Our search results are now automatically tuned based on business metrics that matter,” Ribero noted. “Endeca On-Demand not only powers our site search results, it also propels other revenue-driving areas throughout the site. For example, every page that originates from Google, MSN or Yahoo! gets merchandising zones driven by Endeca On-Demand. These effective and dynamic merchandising zones account for 3 percent of our total monthly revenue, and this impact is growing month to month.”

CableOrganizer.com enjoyed another Endeca On-Demand’s features after one of its products was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. By using the platform’s Dynamic Merchandising component, the company was able to promote the product on its website alongside video and flash content without any IT or vendor involvement.

Ribero went on to explain that the user interface control offered by Endeca On-Demand is “a huge value because we aren’t given limitation on the look and feel.” He continued, saying that “allowing users to refine by product review data, such as benefits and best uses, is another plus. Endeca On-Demand can pull in these unique data feeds with ease.”

Thanx Media is able to provide rapid deployment to deliver Endeca On-Demand to online retailers’ sites in less than three weeks. Clients also have the option to bring the Endeca Information Access platform in-house and own the solution. Having all these options, clients finally have long-term solutions for their site search, navigation, and merchandising needs.

About CableOrganizer.com:
Founded in February 2002 and headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, CableOrganizer.com is a premier cable and wire management-related product vendor. The company provides companies, organizations and individuals around the globe with 24/7/365 access to an extensive array of high-quality products and information resources through its convenient online storefront. In addition to CableOrganizer.com, the company also owns and operates CableOrganizer.fr, which is operated out of Rennes, France. CableOrganizer.com also publishes “On the Wire,” a free monthly electronic newsletter with a considerable multi-national opt-in circulation base. Among other honors, CableOrganizer.com was named among Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 500, Internet Retailer magazine’s 2007 “Top 500” and earned a Stevie® Award as the “Best Overall Company of the Year – Non-Services Businesses – Up To 100 Employees.”

In today’s economic climate, online retailers need to know that they can rely on their technology vendors and partners who deliver on all commitments. Today, Thanx Media, a leading e-commerce solutions company, announced it has signed 28 new customers looking to improve conversion rates, increase revenue per order and boost customer retention momentum, and who require a business partner with a track record to trust with their critical eCommerce operations.

Thanx Media would like to assure our customers and prospects that our business and service remains rock solid. Customers can expect the same, premium service that backs up the leading technologies they rely on to operate and differentiate their online presence.

“Thanx Media would like to express our gratitude to our customers for making us the industry leader in eCommerce search, navigation, merchandising and overall user experience,” states Paul Matker, CEO of Thanx Media “In the past six months, we signed on 28 new customers onto our best-of-breed solutions such as Endeca On-Demand. Our business continues to expand today because we reduce the operational and financial cost of providing the premium online experience that delivers predictable revenue gains.” Thanx Media remains a 100% cash flow positive company with 0% debt.

In the past two weeks, Thanx Media has been in contact with numerous eCommerce retailers who rely on other search vendors that are in financial distress. Thanx Media has worked with these customers to create back-up plans to support them, should they find it prudent to make a switch to the Endeca On-Demand solution. Thanx Media extends an invitation to any retailers who would like to prepare accordingly to assure that they are on solid ground when it comes to the search technology that is critical to their operations.

For customers of mid-market site search vendors, upgrade to Endeca On-Demand. The solution is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering featuring Endeca’s best-in-class Guided Navigation®, search and merchandising capabilities. Designed to boost conversion rates and increase average order size, the hosted, fully managed offering is aimed at business-to-consumer and business-to-business e-commerce operations. As a result, fast growing, retailers and distributors can rapidly deploy the fully configurable, feature-rich user experience capabilities proven on the web’s most successful and highly trafficked eCommerce stores.

Thanx Media, a leading e-commerce solutions company, recently utilized its Endeca On-Demand service to help client Mountain Equipment Co-Op (MEC), Canada’s leading retailer of outdoor clothing and equipment, revitalize its Web site to allow for improved searching, navigating and merchandising capabilities in both English and French Canadian.

Using the Endeca On-Demand solution, Thanx Media was able to integrate with MEC’s existing e-commerce software, thus upgrading its existing systems and eliminating the need for a total site redesign. Thanx Media’s custom implementation was configured to meet MEC’s unique requirements, including handling its educational articles and content, migrating its existing English/French Canadian thesaurus, and plans for a future e-commerce upgrade.

“Our approach to Mountain Equipment Co-Op’s requirements wasn’t about a cookie-cutter implementation,” stated Marcel Munoz, Vice President of Development for Thanx Media. “We made sure the Endeca platform worked well with their current system while considering both their immediate requirements and plans for upgrades.”

Munoz further explained, “Their site needed to introduce a new user experience and support two languages in only six weeks. We not only delivered the best site search technology, but also enabled dynamic merchandising for up-sells and cross-sells, and content spotlighting for related banner ads and landing page content, all within the short timeframe.”

“I am very impressed with the quality and speed of Thanx Media’s work,” said MEC’s e-commerce development manager Bob Hermanutz. “Everyone was very easy to work with, and their targeted search solutions and navigation features made it extremely simple to get our new site up and running.”

Currently, Thanx Media and MEC are focusing on executing on-going recommendations to maximize the benefits of the Endeca On-Demand platform.

About Mountain Equipment Co-Op
Mountain Equipment Co-Op is Canada’s leading retailer of outdoor clothing and equipment, providing quality products and services for self-propelled activities like hiking, climbing and skiing. Established in 1971, MEC has more than 2.7 million members throughout Canada and around the world.

Matching consumers with brands then providing a shopping experience focused on a niche can increase sales.​

Read more at:
http://www.internetretailer.com/2008/05/02/mighty-merchandising

Hosted, fully-managed offering brings best-in-class Guided Navigation, search, and merchandising capabilities to mid-market e-commerce operations

Read more at:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/04/prweb823304.htm