Clever Blog

Recommnedations engines...every site needs one...

Erick Shonfeld from Business 2.0 had a great post today about eBay's acquisition of StumbleUpon.

There have been numerous reports/rumors about this deal for the past month, along with a bunch of speculation about why eBay would buy them for $75million.  I think Erick nails it when he says it is about "discovery". It has long been said that eBay needs to provide its users with a more personalized site experience, and enabling them to find and discover (and bid/buy!) new items simply has to be part of eBay's strategy.  This acquisition gives them some level of site-based discovery, which their customers are going to love.

The next question for eBay, and other large retailers is 'what's next'? How do they continue to provide a great shopping experience for their customers? Is it all about site design? Does site navigation enable personalization?  At CleverSet, we don't believe there is only one solution but i do agree with Erick when he says "Discovery can also be thought of as the latest twist on recommendation engines.  And every e-commerce site needs one of those."

Start-ups attract the "Swiss Army Knives" of the world

Start-ups are amazing!  Guy Kawasaki has written a number of great books but my favorite is The Art of the start - if you're an entrepreneur and haven't read it, you should - it talks about the inner workings of early stage companies and some of the most critical things towards success - people is at the forefront, of course.

One of the qualities that we look for when interviewing potential team members at CleverSet is a person's ability to be a part of the 'swiss army knife" that is a start-up.  This means that they need to have multiple skill sets, a willingness to do it all on a moments notice, and be reliable in the tough, difficult and different circumstances.   

When your team members shines through in those circumstances it just reaffirms that you've hired the right people.  I had one of those moments today, except not with someone we have hired - it was the guy who hired me, our founder, Bruce D'Ambrosio. 

Today Bruce was introduced to a potential customer (to remain nameless for now) and went into a meeting expecting to talk about our technology, ease of implementation and then hand it off to our sales team. 

I called Bruce three hours after the meeting had started to find out how it went.  He wasn't able to talk much because he was STILL  in their offices, and was in the process of helping them implement our Recommendations on their site right then.  He had short-circuited any sales "process" and was moving this customer to 'live' - simply amazing.

Great work Bruce, but be careful, I may give you a 'bag' and tell you to go close sales from here on out!!!!

Market to the Max Event

I presented at the Market To The Max Conference  (Seattle Direct Marketing Association) yesterday in Seattle. The session was titled "Better Recommendations. Better Sales." and I was joined by Ryan Allison, founder of AwineStore.com. AwineStore was the first retail site to launch with CleverSet, almost 18 months ago.

There was a mix of marketers, "internet marketers", direct marketers and content managers in the room. The conversation and questions ranged from "what is personalization" to "why do recommendations work" - everybody seemed to have an opinion on how they should be presenting content and products to their customers, although very few were actually doing so on their site. When we talked about personalizing to the individual level there were some 'ah hah' moments - particularly in that we (CleverSet's Recommendations Service) models each customer on a click-by-click basis and anticipates what that customer is interested in seeing next. 

It's great to see so many people interested in the leveraging the online behavior of their customers to deliver a better customer experience.

I wasn't able to stay for the remainder of the day and was sorry to miss Gary Locke's keynote address.

So, to the SDMA - thanks for the invitation - it was fun to be a part of the event!

5 Opportunities to Improve E-Commerce

Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester came out with a great report yesterday called Five Immediate Opportunities for E-Commerce Improvements. She mentions the need for sophisticated product discovery like our’s and says that surprisingly few e-commerce companies are embracing the technology. From our perspective, we’re definitely seeing traction in the marketplace among both large and small e-Commerce companies, especially in the last six months. Online retailers are catching on to the fact that creating a relevant, personalized site experience is a must have not a nice to have. We’re really trying to focus our sales and marketing messages on our fast time to implementation and revenue lift per visitor. E-commerce is extremely competitive and if customers are going to implement a new technology they need to know that it’s going to work and it’s going to work fast. Expect to see more results-oriented customer success news from us in the coming weeks.

Thoughts on Wisdom of the Crowds

I know it’s been a few days since I last posted, but it’s been a busy week at CleverSet. First of all, we’re thrilled to announce that CleverSet has been chosen as a finalist in the “most innovative company” category for the American Business Association Stevies Awards. We were one of just a few hundred finalists chosen from over 2,000 applicants across the U.S.in all sectors. We think that’s a great validation of the innovative technology at the core of CleverSet’s online personalization technology for retailers. But even more gratifying is seeing how CleverSet is helping online retailers boost sales and increase customer satisfaction in ways they never before thought possible. Take Wine Enthusiast. The company – the leading source for wine accessories, storage, information and events – recently implemented CleverSet on wineenthusiast.com to offer customers personalized product recommendations, boosting revenue-per-visit by 23% in a matter of days. And that revenue lift has continued unabated for over two months. So whether CleverSet wins a Stevies Award in June or not, we already feel like we’ve won in the game of helping online retailers.

We continue to focus our attention on the real issues that surround the e-commerce industry, and we’ve just published a whitepaper on how what we think is the next step in online retail: one-to-one marketing. In the paper, we discuss a popular concept – the wisdom of crowds – and how retailers have used it to sell more products. By tapping the wisdom of crowds, retailers can find out which of their products are popular among a large group. That serves a purpose, but it misses the true promise of the Internet: a one-to-one experience. If retailers could tap the “power of one”, selling each individual the products and services that fit his or her individual needs, the retail world would never be the same – and profits would explode. We hope retailers will harness the power of one-to-one marketing, because we are convinced it’s the future of the Internet. If you’re interested in seeing a copy of the white paper, drop me a line todd at cleverset dotcom.

Cross-country sights...

I’ve been traveling a ton this year – every week except for 3 since January 1st.  Being on the road is challenging for a variety of reasons, particularly being away from my soon-to-be 3 and soon-to-be 5 year old daughters way too much. It’s also tough from a business perspective because it means being away from the CleverSet office in Seattle, our team and the day-to-day operations of our company. But, there is simply no other way – we’re in a critical stage of our company and the ‘road’ beckons. 

One of my favorite writers is Peter King at Sports Illustrated. His columns are informative, well-researched and funny.  Every Monday he writes a short piece on ‘Aggravating Travel Thoughts’ from the past week.  I love it – funny instances a variety of travel.  So, in following Peter’s lead I am going to do the same – these will be random thoughts from my travel experiences.

So here’s the first one: This morning I woke up at 4am for a 6am flight to Denver, on my way to NY.  Travel today is tough – long lines at ticket counters and security are really starting to wear people down.  But, this morning was different. I used the United ticket kiosk at SeaTac and then sailed through security (amazing what status you can obtain when you fly 35,000 miles a quarter).  So I avoided the lines, right?!  Wrong.  I turned the corner to see 57 people in the Starbucks line.  Yes, FIFTY SEVEN people – I counted!  Keep in mind this was at 5.15am.  What an amazing company Starbucks is – the ‘following’ they have created is simply amazing – the caffeine doesn’t hurt either.

Other interesting sights & observations:

* It was a crystal clear day in Denver but we still waited 45 minutes on the runway.  It’s amazing how restless people get when there are delays – unfortunately the flight attendants take the brunt of that frustration, which has never made sense to me.

* At least 70% of the people on this flight are business travelers.  At least 80% of them are staring at laptops (what did we all do before laptops?), and I would say that 50% of them using an Apple product. And, probably 30% of those travelers are wearing iPods.

* I just saw a 25 year old guy with a black beard tattooed on his face – pretty cool looking – except for when he is 60 years old.

* Upon landing there were five people standing within four feet of me – all five us were checking, typing or talking on Blackberries – again, incredible market penetration!

I’m sure I’ll have more to report given that I just landed in New York.....

Google and Personalization

Google’s making a big push for personalization. They invited journalists to the first-ever Google Personalization Day to unveil some new stuff they’re up to with personalization. For one, Google is allowing users to set a default geographical location, which will allow them to get targeted search results; searchers who type in “spa” would get listings for spas in their town, for example. And then Google is doing some “behind the scenes” personalization with its Web History, allowing users to get more relevant results based on their past browsing and search history.

We think it’s great that Google is making forays into personalization. After all, the future of the Web is about creating a personal experience for each user – not a one-size-fits-all Internet. In fact, here at CleverSet, personalization is our mantra. We believe that until the Web is totally personalized, it’s falling short of consumers’ needs. Our idea of personalization is complementary to Google’s emerging offerings, because we personalize on a real-time, one-on-one level every time a visitor comes to a website. We analyze the relationships between a user’s current behavior, clickstream data, stored customer information, product catalog details and purchase history to actually predict what a customer will want to buy next.

So when someone visits a website to shop for chardonnay, they get recommendations for chardonnay. When they come back an hour later to look for a corkscrew, they get recommendations for corkscrews. Our technology doesn’t “store” your browsing behavior, but instead looks at your immediate, real-time activity on a site to offer totally relevant, up-to-the-minute recommendations. We think it’s great that Google is attempting to deliver on the personalization promise of a “the Internet just for me” – because that’s CleverSet’s goal, too.