Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Author: Chris Duffy

  • An executive’s guide to choosing the right site search.

    An executive’s guide to choosing the right site search.

    Why is site search important?

    Did you know that website visitors using site search are 216% more likely to convert than other users? Your website’s internal site search fosters conversions by helping users find the information they need in a hurry. 

    But site search doesn’t have to be “hands off”; you can gain even more benefits by going a step further. For example, you can build lists of visitors who search certain terms in Google Analytics. Now you have an engaged segment for remarketing ads that are more likely to convert. 

    Or, simply gather information on search queries and use the data to optimize content. Popular search terms can provide direction for SEO, content priority, and user-friendly navigation labeling.

    What key features can site search provide?

    At a minimum, your site search should include features that a user would expect, like fast results, filtering options, breadcrumbs, synonyms, and typing ahead.

    On the admin side, your site search should include reporting on key terms and usage, a Google Analytics integration to help you compare queries to behavior, and the general ability to integrate with your tools.

    Some top tier search tools go above and beyond, including features like AI auto ranking, proximity matching, and personalization.

    Which software should I choose?

    At Atlantic BT, our teams have experience implementing Swiftype, Algolia, and ElasticSearch. All of these options offer standard features, fast results, and plenty of integration options.

    We would recommend using Algolia or Elastic Enterprise Search in almost all situations. Take a look at a few scenarios where you would use each.

    Algolia

    In most situations, Algolia is the best option. That’s because it includes well-defined API documentation, framework integrations, and a developer-friendly platform that make for simple implementation. It is also the platform that offers the best pricing for low volume performance while offering the most advanced features for high volume websites.

    Some of Algolia’s unique optional features include A/B testing, merchandising, AI auto adjusting of result sets, and search result personalization. Because it directly integrates with Magento 2 and Shopify, Algolia is usually the best solution for eCommerce stores.

    On the other hand, if traffic is high volume (like exceeding 1 million searches per month), there are a large amount of pages indexed, or there’s no need for special features; Algolia is probably not the best option.

    Overall, Elastic Enterprise Search is the best option for sites that have very high volume search traffic (or a very high number of indexed items), but do not have a need for some of the more advanced features that Algolia offers. Because it’s self-hosted, it’s a popular choice for applications with strict security requirements because data does not have to be sent to a SaaS solution.

    While Enterprise Search has no limit on queries and documents, server size will have to increase to keep performance optimal. At high traffic volume (1 million hits and above), Elastic Enterprise Search will still go up in cost. However, it increases at a significantly slower pace than Algolia.

    Elastic Enterprise Search also offers a maintenance-free crawler, Elastic Site Search. It keeps content current while intuitive customization features and robust analytics provide full control over search relevance. 

    If you’d like to enhance your search quickly utilizing a web crawler, Elastic Site Search a great option for you.

    Atlantic BT has experience implementing site search in all sorts of industries. We can make a recommendation based on your business requirements, set up site search with your website, and integrate site search with other software. Reach out for a free consultation to get started.

  • Magento Imagine: Is It Time to Upgrade to Magento 2?

    As one of the 2,500+ eCommerce experts who attended last week’s Magento Imagine conference in Las Vegas, I looked forward to seeing Magento’s grand vision for the global eCommerce ecosystem. I met a lot of vendors, kicked back with other system integrators, and learned a ton of new technologies and best practices. Here are my main takeaways.

    Everybody is Moving to Magento 2. Eventually.

    Magento 2 is here. As you might imagine, the new release was a focus of many presentations at the conference, including a success story panel I attended. This panel discussed three projects that had been done using Magento 2 and described why Magento 2 was the right move for them. Without getting into all the details, I was convinced—if you were developing a new ecommerce site today, you would definitely consider Magento 2 as a solution.

    However, two of the three success stories have not launched their website yet. The main reason for these delays were dependencies on third-party vendors to deliver Magento 2-compatible plugins that were not complete yet. As much as it’s easy to complain about third-party plugins, there are a lot of them out there that are essential to keeping the budget on a project reasonable. Even so, the lesson here is clear: If you are starting a Magento 2 project today, make sure any plugin you need is already available or has a definitive timeline for availability.

    It’s also worth noting that all three companies were in desperate need of a new ecommerce site, but not necessarily a Magento 2 site. In every instance, the requirements and needs for a new ecommerce site could have been achieved by Magento 1. Magento 2 does offer more features, a modern admin interface, modern programming standards, and a much easier testing infrastructure. That said, if you are on Magento 1 and you have a well-functioning website, then there’s no current need to transition to Magento 2 in the near future.

    When I discussed this point with several developers at the conference, most said they had taken the training for Magento 2 and had either just started a Magento 2 site or hadn’t actually built one yet. This leads to the natural question: “When should I move to Magento 2?” The short answer is “whenever you need to rebuild your site.” Basically, you should only make the transition to Magento 2 if it makes business sense. And unless you are on a near-stock version of Magento, a migration from 1 to 2 should be treated like a site rebuild.

    The Battle for B2B E-commerce

    The battlelines have been drawn: you’ve got Magento on one side, and on the other you’ve got Oro, a company which consists of all the original creators of Magento. Oro even had their own Oro Momentum conference the day before Imagine at the same hotel.

    This conference showed off the new beta for Oro commerce and the other products built on the Oro Platform. Oro Commerce is the real interesting piece of software, being a customized B2B catalog and shopping cart. This platform includes everything you could ever want from a B2B shopping experience, including tailored catalogs, custom price lists, SKU lookups, order grid, etc. Oro has repeatedly said they are creating an easy way for system integrators to integrate ERPs into this system. Everything about this feels like the way that B2B e-commerce should be done and it feels like it was built that way from the ground up.

    Magento on the other hand, is also launching a B2B feature set over the summer. They didn’t give a lot of specifics on it but it did sound like custom catalogs and price lists were at least included. Magento currently is the most popular B2B ecommerce platform right now but it is mainly because there is not a ton of competition in the space. Oro is bringing a very real alternative to the table and Magento is looking to match this.

    Magento Reenters the PaaS Space with Magento Enterprise Cloud

    Magento is entering the Cloud Service space again. But this time, Magento Enterprise Cloud aims to be everything Magento Go should have been. While Magento Go offered a turnkey solution that was easy to implement, a typical merchant looking to use Magento requires a solution that allows deep customization. This was why Magento Go failed, and why Magento Enterprise Cloud has a good chance to succeed. Merchants can easily integrate this new Platform as a Service(PaaS) into all of their third party systems and match it to their business use cases. Magento Enterprise Cloud also provides a best practice infrastructure setup to simplify things further.

    After watching a technical presentation on this, I asked some of their engineers which kinds of companies this solution would best fit. For Atlantic BT, it probably would not make much sense because our hosting and infrastructure setup is nearly identical to what they’re providing. Instead, Magento Enterprise Cloud works best for development groups who do not do their own hosting and infrastructure and do not want to. The admin dashboard for Magento Enterprise Cloud makes it very easy for a developer to deploy code to dev, QA, or prod without ever needing to know anything about the hosting and infrastructure.

    Pricing for Magento Enterprise Cloud will be announced in a few weeks. When that happens, we’ll really know how competitive of a hosting option this is.

    Magento Marketplace 2.0

    There are a lot of problems with the old Magento marketplace, the biggest of which is the average quality of code. Right now, when somebody says they want to install something out of the marketplace, my first assumption is “that plugin is probably garbage and will not work.” This sounds harsh, but as an experienced Magento developer that’s what we’ve grown accustomed to with the plugins available.

    Marketplace 2.0 aims to change that. The new Magento Marketplace adds real code audits and reviews to verify the plugins follow best coding practices and standards. While this will make it more difficult and time-consuming for developers to get plug-ins into the marketplace, these new standards should assure that only quality plugins are available. As a developer, I really hope this is successful so all of us in the community can have faith in the plugins coming from the marketplace again.

    The Conference as a Whole

    Going into the conference, I was skeptical about the direction Magento was going. This was the first conference that Magento has hosted since their split from Ebay. However, it seems obvious from the conference they are building momentum on bettering their internal products and offerings as well as a plethora of support from the community. Magento 2 may be slow for adoption, but it looks to be a viable option now and a major player in the years to come.

    If you have thoughts on the Magento Imagine conference, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to comment in the discussion section below.

  • When to Integrate Your ERP with Magento

    If you are running an eCommerce site or are considering getting started with eCommerce, you likely have heard of Magento. Magento is easily the leading eCommerce platform and it runs some of the most familiar eCommerce sites on the Web today. We’ve helped a number of clients build their eCommerce sites on Magento and the platform has worked very well for them. But one of the common questions we hear on eCommerce projects deals with connecting an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to Magento. Specifically, clients want to know when they should undertake this integration.

    When Should You Integrate Your ERP with Magento?

    The simple answer to this question is to do it right away! But in reality, the situation is a little more complex. If you are building a new site on Magento, you should really consider integrating the two as a part of your project from the outset. While it is possible to integrate the two platforms after the fact, it is much easier to complete the work up front when building out your eCommerce site.

    Do I need an ERP for My eCommerce Site?

    In some instances, though, we’ve encountered clients that want to know when they need to purchase an ERP. This situation is a little more complicated. But it is also one made a little easier if you are considering building out an eCommerce site. Here are a few keys to consider that can help you in making the decision:

    1. Do you have a warehouse (or multiple warehouses)? If you store your products in a warehouse, you have inventory. And inventory needs to be tracked so you know how much of each product you have available to sell. An ERP is essential to helping you manage your inventory, especially if you have multiple warehouses.
    2. Do you drop ship your products? Drop shipping is a method of order fulfillment that sends the product direct to the customer from the warehouse (or retailer), thereby skipping the brick and mortar store all together. This gets the order to the customer much faster. But it also is heavily dependent on an updated inventory list, which is best kept inside an ERP.
    3. Do you have a need for “pick lists”? Pick lists are a part of your order fulfillment process that allows you to pull multiple items from your inventory and combine them into one order prior to shipping to the customer. Depending upon your inventory and order fulfillment process, your pick lists can get pretty complicated. If you have a need for pick lists, you will likely want to use an ERP as well. An ERP will help you manage your inventory and reduce the number of shipping errors. And integrating your ERP with your eCommerce site will provide accurate, up-to-date information to the customer to create a better experience at the time of purchase.
    4. Do you use a CRM (customer relationship management) tool? CRMs are used as part of the overall management of customers and prospective customers to make sure you’re providing the most relevant and helpful information to them at the time they need it. CRMs collect a lot of information about your customer base. Connecting the CRM to an ERP creates a very powerful data set that can help you better serve your customers.
    5. Are you engaged in B2B sales? Business to business sales is quite a bit different from business to consumer sales. Some of the key differences are group buying, organizational discounts and purchase orders, just to name a few. Also, historically, B2B orders have been collected via phone or through a designated sales person, both of which are traditionally handled outside of the eCommerce website. By integrating your ERP and eCommerce site, you create a powerful resource for your sales and order teams to help them handle B2B orders.

    Taking the Next Step in eCommerce

    No matter whether you have an existing ERP or are just starting out on your journey to implement one, you will be much better off if you explore ways to integrate the ERP with Magento from the beginning. The integration will provide you with a powerful system that can handle most of your eCommerce and order fulfillment needs.

    Our team at Atlantic BT has helped clients build out their Magento eCommerce platform and integrate it with ERPs such as Apprise, Great Plains, M3 and Sage. If you would like to know more about our eCommerce integration services and explore ways we can help you with your needs, call us at (919) 518-0670 x6 or use our contact form and we will get you connected with one of our solutions specialists. And in the process, we’ll show you why we specialize in solving some of your toughest eCommerce website challenges.