iGoDigital

A Retailers Need to Embrace Facebook

Thursday, March 11, 2010 by Eric Tobias

Facebook vs. Google…..really?

While it seems hard to believe the social networking site the search giant nervous, recent data is beginning to illustrate the growing threat Facebook poses.

The graph below shows a really interesting trend with a deep impact on the future of retail.

via BrianSolis.com

As the information above conveys, some of the largest e-commerce sites are beginning to see a higher percentage of their traffic originating from Facebook than Google.   The traditional retail tactics of getting new customers to the site, through SEO and PPC, are being replaced by real-time conversations via social networks.   These real-time conversations have major influence on a retailer’s brand and the likelihood of getting a new customer to click-through to your site.

At this point, it seems as if every retailer has launched a Facebook page or have created a Twitter account.   It’s becoming clear retailers will need to quickly move beyond the basics and figure out how to engage in real conversations with their customers or risk losing their lifeblood – clicks – to their competitors because they simply aren't in the conversation.

Pitney Bowes Launches Business Solutions Finder

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Kristi Smith

We recently launched a Solutions Finder at Pitney Bowes, the world's largest producer of postage meters.

Pitney Bowes was seeking a way to inform businesses about its vast line of mailing and shipping solutions and services. PB engaged us to support an interactive Solutions Finder to connect businesses of all sizes to the proper Pitney Bowes service for their specific needs.

This fun and interactive tool introduces new and current customer prospects to the full scope of products and services and provides a guided education to each individual. Utilizing a series of segment targeting strategies, the Solutions Finder provides recommendations for each unique business.

Upon completing the process, the Solutions Finder recommends the appropriate Pitney Bowes solution and service. The interactive marketing tool leverages the iGoDigital product recommendation engine which is built upon our Customer Intelligence Engine. This Customer Intellignce Engine captures each individual customers' specific needs and allows for Pitney Bowes segment targeting strategies to be utilized in real-time.

The Solutions Finder has increased the number of new customer leads and helped foster existing customer education and satisfaction.

Pitney Bowes.....welcome to the iGoDigital family!

Visit the Pitney Bowes Solutions Finder

Staying Relevant with Targeted Email

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Eric Tobias

Last year's holiday season saw retailers sending a record number of promotional e-mails.

This effort to grab users' attention results in user frustration and lower than expected click-through rates. To counter balance this, retailers need to focus their marketing and promotional emails on personalization and targeting in 2010.

A recent survey demonstrates this point - with more marketers planning to use interest-based preferences and behavioral targeting within their outbound emails.

Among marketers worldwide surveyed in 2009, 93% believe segmentation was at least somewhat valuable for improving conversion rates. In addition, marketers reported the most important e-mail marketing initiative —after the generic “better performance” option—was to improve segmentation and targeting techniques.

The challenge for retailers and marketers is understanding how to perform these segmentation's on an automated basis.

At iGoDigital, our Customer Intelligence Engine observes user behavior, in real-time, and automatically segments each user based on their behavior and interests. This real-time segmentation allows our clients to send personalized, highly-targeted emails, via their promotional outbound marketing. Customer experience management is a key priority for many marketers today and the effectiveness of these efforts can be significant.

Personalized Product Recommendations and Mass Merchants

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Dan Hanrahan

Anyone interested in Business Intelligence or solving challenges related to big data would find "The Data Deluge" report from The Economist fascinating. The article was highly relevant to some of the challenges facing Mass Merchant retailers like Sears, Walmart, and Kohl’s.

For example, before a hurricane struck, WalMart stores sold more flashlights and batteries, as expected, but there was also a run on Pop-Tarts. These types of trends are intriguing and, if correctly applied, drive sales.

Walmart discovered the basket trends in 2004 from an intensive data mining of in-store purchase behavior. Today, Mass Merchants can garner similar intelligence via recommendation engines, the best of which can recognize buying trends related to geo-targeting ,product attributes, and the wisdom of crowds.

For mass merchants, manual cross-sells simply are not an option. When products range from flashlights to Pop-Tarts, common sense cannot always identify likely bundles. Further, frequent changes to the product catalogue make this a nearly impossible task. Many have implemented basic cross-sell / up-sell logic, but this falls short as well.

When the product mix is diverse, relevant product recommendations at the cart drive 10-20% increases in Average Order Value. Relevant recommendations on the home page related to a shopper’s recent browsing and purchase history streamline the browse-buy cycle, driving conversion rates and return visits.

Most look to Amazon.com, an iGoDigital Product Finder customer, as the pinnacle of personalized cross-sells. If I go to Amazon.com for a book, I see a pair of Pumas I browsed during my last visit, and before I know it I have the book and the Pumas in my cart. On the view cart page, Amazon displays Puma running shorts, and I figure “what the heck”. All of a sudden, my $15 book turned into a $115 order.

Few have the resources to build Amazon-like systems in-house, and it does not seem to be a good use of resources with today’s third party recommendation engines. The top product recommendation providers can recreate the above experience in short time on your site. Mass merchants arguably have the most to gain from intelligent product recommendation engines and should continually be up to date on best practices and best-of-breed providers.

Company Culture and Today's Entrepreneur

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Eric Tobias

One of our technology partners, Bazaarvoice (www.bazaarvoice.com), announced they recently showed their 100 billion impression of social commerce content. This is a big milestone and shows the enormous power their product has had on the retail community.  User generated content, and specifically ratings and reviews, has become a staple for consumers shopping online.   It's safe to say that its impossible to provide the best online shopping experience without offering this feature.

As I've thought about Bazaarvoice's milestone this week, I've found myself coming back to the culture they have created and how important that has been to their success. Brett Hurt, their founder and CEO, has stressed culture since the beginning of the company.   As they've experienced rapid growth over the past few years, the company's focus on creating a great corporate culture has only increased.  Bazaarvoice's decision to focus on the company's culture is a positive trend and a key focus for many of our industry's rising stars.

As we continue to grow at iGoDigital, I'm becoming more and more aware of the importance of culture for the long-term prosperity of our business.   A company's culture is a reflection of it's people and we have some great people at iGoDigital.   As I look at my list of strategic priorities for the coming months, I'm striving to focus more of my attention towards our corporate culture and our people.

Best Practices for Adding Product Recommendations to Your Website

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by Eric Tobias

New client prospects often ask us about the top performing product recommendation scenarios and website page combinations.   In other words, they want to know where they should put product recommendations on their site and which types of recommendation scenarios will work the best on those pages.

While each implementation is different and a variety of factors influence our suggestions, we've built a series of "Best Practices" for the implementation of product recommendations within a website.   The following represents a snapshot of those "Best Practices" developed through years of client implementations and data analysis.

Homepage
Since the homepage is often the first entry point for consumers, we recommend our clients add personalization elements to this page.   While our client analytics indicate this page to be less important than others, in terms of personalization, the homepage sets the stage for the overall site experience.   In addition, some of our clients have high bounce rates at the homepage and personalized product recommendations really help overcome this challenge.

We suggest clients use the following recommendation scenarios on the homepage:

Customers Who Viewed Items in Your History Also Viewed
Most Popular Items on the Site Today
Items Related to Items You Recently Viewed
Customers With Similar Searches Ultimately Purchased
Suggestions Just For You

Product Category Pages
The product category level of a website is often the "first click" we see. As part of our technology implementation on a website, our systems are observing user behavior with each click within a site. Since users most often land on a site's homepage or category page, the category site often represents our first opportunity to learn something about the user's intent on the site.

We suggest clients use the following recommendation scenarios on product category pages:

Top Selling Items in <CategoryName>
Most Popular Items in <CategoryName>
Highest Rated Items in <CategoryName>

If a user has been to the category before, and is a repeat visitor, our analytic data shows higher click-through and conversion rates when using personalized recommendation scenarios such as:

Items Related to Items You Recently Viewed
Other Customers Who Were Interested in <CategoryName> Eventually Bought
Suggestions Just For You

Product Detail Pages
By the time a website user reaches the Product Detail Page of a website, their intent is becoming more and more defined. Typically, the user will have utilized site search or navigation to view a category or search term prior to engaging with a specific product. At the product level, our systems attempt to determine why a user has given preference (via their click) to a specific item and how that item relates to their overall site behavior.

For example, if a user has just visited the Digital Camera category of the website and is now viewing a Canon Powershot SD1200 camera which sells for $299.99, our system is tracking the unique attributes of the product and comparing those attributes to a variety of factors, including your behavior and the behavior of the overall crowd.

We suggest our clients use the following recommendation scenarios on product detail pages:

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Items Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought Items in Your Recent History Also Bought
You May Also Like
Recommendations Just For You

Shopping Cart
User's add items to their shopping cart for 3 reasons: they have a deep intent to purchase the item, they are interested in the item but may not intend to purchase it today, and finally they were simply curious how the site worked. We always assume a user falls into the first two positions so our recommendation strategy at the shopping cart is all about conversion and upsell.

We suggest our clients use the following recommendation scenarios at the shopping cart page:

Customers Who Added These Items Also Bought
Customers Who Bought Items in Your Shopping Cart Eventually Bought
Customers Who Added These Items Also Viewed
Items Recently Viewed

Search Pages
The search results page of a website often represents a user who is browsing or seeking a specific item. Since these two behaviors are in contrast to one another, our Customer Intelligence Engine attempts to determine the true intent.

When it comes to displaying product recommendations at the search results page, we suggest our clients use the following recommendation scenarios:

Customers Who Searched for <SearchTerm> Also Viewed
Customers Who Searched for <SearchTerm> Eventually Bought
Items Recently Viewed
Items Related to Items You Recently Viewed

We also strongly recommend our clients use product recommendations on their "No Results Found" search results page.   Most sites today display a customer friendly message when search results are not possible but very few sites give consumers a path to other items which they might find of interest.   We've seen great results with this strategy and recommend it for all of our implementations.

Other Pages of Interest
In addition to the common pages mentioned above, we've also implemented recommendations on several auxillary pages such as New Arrivals, Ratings & Reviews, FAQ pages, Blog pages, and Closeouts.   We've also created a "Recommendations Just For You" page on several of our client sites.   These pages give consumers a standard place to go to see items which are specifically recommended for them.

Summary
Every client is different.   We are passionate about the truth of this statement and it influences our decisions and recommendations throughout a project.   That said, we hope these "Best Practices" provide some insight into the specific pages of a website where product recommendations are most successful along with the scenario types which have the most success on each page.

As always, if we can help your site's journey of creating a personalized experience for each and every customer, please give us a call.

What makes us tick

Monday, February 22, 2010 by Matt Coffman

Welcome to the iGoDigital Technology Blog. I'm a little late to the game, but that doesn't mean I'm any less interested in helping to provide insight into how we do what we do.

First, I want to touch on the purpose of this blog. Besides helping customers and prospects understand how our products work, iGoDigital also wants to be a good technology citizen and highlight how some of the hard work in the community enables us to do what we do better, faster, and more cost effectively.

This is such an exciting time to be developing software based on all the revolutionary things going on around the web. It seems like advent of a new database, web, or mobile platform. Trying to keep up with all the change is almost a full-time job in itself. Trying to figure out which technologies are production-ready or might give us a competitive advantage is even harder. My hope is to provide nuggets of information we've found and possibly help others wiggle their ways out of dead ends or discover some new solution to a problem.

For customers and other interested parties, I'd also like to give a small window into how we execute the fundamental process of recommending products and services to web users (without, of course, giving away any secret "special sauce"). We've got plenty of marketing terminology to describe the various parts of our software ("Customer Intelligence Engine", "Guided Selling Tool", "Collaborative Filtering Platform"), but in reality there are lots of smaller components which have interesting capabilities on their own.

So, from time to time, we'll go in-depth on various components of our platform and try to call attention to other platforms or technologies we use to make our lives easier.

StumpsParty.com Launches Personalized Product Recommendations from iGoDigital

Friday, February 19, 2010 by Kristi Smith

Earlier this week, we launched personalized product recommendations at StumpsParty.com, a leading online ecommerce provider of party favors and party supplies.

The StumpsParty.com website now features several areas of personalization, powered by iGoDigital, as users visit the site. When looking at the homepage of the website, users are presented with a series of product recommendations which are personalized for each individual user based on their behavior and real-time intent. The recommendations feature specific, dynamically generated titles to help explain the foundations for which they are based, including unique titles just for StumpsParty.com.

The iGoDigital Customer Intelligence Engine looks at a variety of factors, including current session customer behavior, previous session user behavior, and aggregate crowd wisdom to determine the recommended products in real-time. In addition, the iGoDigital engine looks for key attributes such as party theme and seasonality within the recommendation algorithms.

iGoDigital exposes a variety of scenarios based on customer response and real-time customer analytics.   These scenarios are dynamic based on user intent and response.   For example, on the product pages, iGoDigital now displays "Customers who viewed this also viewed" and "Customers who viewed this ultimately bought" modules.   These scenarios utilize iGoDigital's cross selling software to provide true e-commerece personalization within the site experience.

The StumpsParty.com product pages now feature personalized product recommendations based on the wisdom of the StumpsParty.com customers, along with the personal preferences of the individual shopper.  These 1-to-1 product recommendations allow customers visibility to the selections made by other online shoppers.   These cross selling techniques allow an automated cross sell up sell without merchant involvement - something that was very important to StumpsParty.com given they sell over 10,000 products.

iGoDigital is excited to be working with StumpsParty.com because of their focus on customer centric selling and their desire to provide the best online shopping experience.

We are proud to be working with StumpsParty.com!

Walmart Updates iPhone App

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by Kristi Smith

Walmart continues to enhance its iPhone application. The updated Walmart app allows customers to shop the entire selection of Walmart products via their iPhone. In addition, the app provides guided selling assistance to consumers shopping for electronics via the on-screen Product Finder.

The Walmart app, available now via iTunes, has been extremely popular since its debut in November of 2009. In its first week, the Walmart app ranked in the top 25 free apps on iTunes and is currently in the top 50 for free lifestyle apps.

Walmart leverages the cross-channel capabilities of iGoDigital's personalized product recommendation platform across their website and mobile phone platform to provide consumers with a consistent experience, regardless of the channel.

For example, customer interest and intent is collected via iGoDigital's Customer Intelligence Engine inside the Walmart TV Finder and is utilized within the mobile app. This seemless exchange of information across channels allows Walmart and iGoDigital to power the most intelligent product recommendations available. In addition, the experience provides consumers with a consistent cross-channel experience.

Download the Walmart iPhone app today via iTunes and see it in-action for yourself.

Geo-Targeting as a Product Recommendations Strategy

Thursday, February 4, 2010 by Dan Hanrahan

Retailers often overlook the importance of a shopper’s geographical location when considering the most relevant product recommendations. Personalized merchandizing is the most powerful way to put the right product in front of each customer. But what if I am new to the site, or if I visit from my work computer or my phone? If there is no previous click or purchase history, can recommendations still be relevant on the home page?

Yes. The best recommendation engines offer a hierarchy of scenarios to solve this challenge:

-If you have some history with the site, let’s personalize recs on the home page.

-If you have no click or purchase history, then show scenario B

-If we can’t show scenario B, let’s show this week’s most popular items.

Optimizing scenario B requires a combination of a capable recommendation engine, analytics, and merchandizing knowledge. It will require A/B testing as well.

For example, iGoDigital often uses location-based recommendations to fill scenario B. We look at the most popular items by location to make the recommendation. For a shopper from Denver, we might show sweaters at the same time a shopper from Miami sees sandals and a shopper from Indianapolis sees Colts gear (sorry…had to slip in a SuperBowl reference!).

Scenario B could include a variety of other factors, but take a look at location as a powerful boost to your product recommendation strategy.

Personalized Product Recommendations for Party Planning

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by Kristi Smith

We recently launched our personalized product recommendations at ShindigZ.com, the leading online ecommerce provider of party supplies and related products.

The site now features several areas of personalization based on users behavior and real-time intent when visiting the site. When looking at the homepage of the website, users are presented with a series of product recommendations which are personalized for each individual user. The recommendations feature specific titles to help explain the foundations for which they are based, including unique titles just for ShindigZ. The iGoDigital Customer Intelligence Engine looks at a variety of factors, including current session customer behavior, previous session user behavior, and aggregrate crowd wisdom to determine the recommended products in real-time. In addition, the iGoDigital engine looks for key attributes such as party theme and seasonality within the recommendation algorithms.

iGoDigital exposes a variety of scenarios based on customer response and real-time customer analytics.   These scenarios are dynamic based on user intent and response.   For example, on the product pages, iGoDigital now displays "Customers who viewed this also viewed" and "Customers who viewed this ultimately bought" modules.   These are just some of the customer insights now exposed directly within the ecommerce site.

The ShindigZ.com product pages now feature personalized product recommendations based on the wisdom of the ShindigZ customers, along with the personal preferences of the individual shopper.  These 1-to-1 product recommendations allow customers visibility to the selections made by other online shoppers.   These cross selling techniques allow an automated cross sell up sell without merchant involvement - something that was very important to ShindigZ given they sell over 10,000 products.

One of the important factors to ShindigZ was the ability to generate custom business rules to sit on top of the product recommendations.   For example, Shindigz stops promoting the current holiday 7 days prior to date of the holiday.   So when the calendar hits December 18th, you'll no longer see Christmas items promoted. iGoDigital worked with ShindigZ to integrate this business logic into the recommendation algorithms to ensure a consistent site experience.

iGoDigital is excited to be working with Shindigz because of their focus on customer centric selling and their desire to improve the buying process for their customers. Shindigz is focused on customer satisfaction and retention and iGoDigital is proud to be apart of that focus. Plus, everyone in our office now knows where to shop before our next party!

Welcome aboard Shindigz!

Listeners Also Bought and the Grammy's

Monday, February 1, 2010 by Eric Tobias

My iPod is currently full with over 10,000 songs - so I consider myself a strong music fan. But as I've gotten older, discovering new music has been more and more of a challenge.   Between work and kids, the time I spend discovering new music is almost non-existent.

As I prepared for a run on the treadmill this weekend, I found myself wanting some new music to listen to.  Sure, there were a few directions I could have gone but I found myself relying on the personalized product recommendations from iTunes and Amazon.   I've been listening to lots of David Gray's new album recently so iTunes suggested I might like Joshua James.   After taking a quick listen, I downloaded the album "Build Me This" and spent the next hour enjoying a new artist.

As I watched the Grammy's last night, I was reminded of the importance of the "Listeners also bought" or "You Might Also Like" feature on iTunes. Without it, my new music purchases would be significantly decreased and my exposure to non-commercial artists would be almost non-existent.    The impact this site feature has on my buying influence is huge.   This says a lot about me but it also says a lot about the state of retail today.   The music business understands the impact of personalized product recommendations.

I think its easy to see the importance of this e-commerce personalization feature for music retailers but I'm more excited about the importance it has on other product categories.   At iGoDigital, our retail clients range from consumer electronics to party supplies to apparel. All of their customers benefit from the same exciting discovery process because of our work.   Exciting stuff.

Nokia Adds Personalized Product Recommendations to Order Confirmation Emails

Friday, January 29, 2010 by Kristi Smith

Buying a new mobile phone can be difficult, so Nokia empowers consumers to make informed decisions.   As part of this strategy, the site offers personalized product recommendations and advice from iGoDigital to give consumers confidence in their choices.

Given the high rate of engagement, Nokia wanted to extend this consumer targeting approach to their outbound order confirmation emails.   When an order is placed on the Nokia website, the order confirmation email now includes personalized product recommendations to associate the item ordered to other items on the Nokia site which are targeted to the individual customer.

This 1-to-1 selling approach is a driving great results.   Email engagement has increased by 125% and click-thrus are up over 100%.

Using iGoDigital's Customer Intelligence Engine, Nokia extends real-time business intelligence analytics to drive personalized product recommendations on a 1-to-1 basis. Based on site behavior of each individual customer, iGoDigital displays the top 4 accessories for the custome and the phone. The social context of the recommendations drives increased click behavior and has increased conversions once the user lands on the site.

Nokia wants to provide consumers with the information they need to make the right decision for their specific situation, removing barriers to purchase along the way, and iGoDigital is a key part of that strategy.

BestBuy.com Ink Finder

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Kristi Smith

Accessories represent a large portion of BestBuy.com's online business yet the amount of manual effort required to match the right Ink and Toner products with the corresponding Printer was simply overwhelming and not productive. To help counter this problem, Best Buy leverages iGoDigital's accessory finder software and data services platform.

iGoDigital's Data Services accounts for all of the product compatibility data required to power the Ink Finder behind the scenese. The BestBuy.com team automatically uploads a copy of its product catalog to iGoDigital on a daily basis. This allows iGoDigital to know and understand which Ink and Toner products Best Buy offers on their site at any given time.

Once this file is received, our proprietary algorithms match the Ink products carried by Best Buy with the vast database of Printers which iGoDigital tracks. Once the compatibility has been verified by our systems, the relationship is published to the Best Buy Ink Finder. The Finder is used at BestBuy.com and inside each of Best Buy's retail stores.

The iGoDigital accessory finder platform has increased conversion rates on the BestBuy site and customer satisfaction has increased due to the ease of finding the right Ink product with just a few clicks.

Newegg.com Memory Finder

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Kristi Smith

Looking to upgrade or replace the memory in your laptop, desktop, printer, or cell phone? iGoDigital just launched its Accessory Finder platform at Newegg.com.

Search the Newegg Memory Finder for replacement memory by brand, series, or model.

Accessories represent a big portion of Newegg's online business yet the amount of manual effort required to match the right accessories with the right devices was simply overwhelming.

iGoDigital's Data Services accounts for all of the product compatibility data required to power the Memory Finder behind the scenese.   The Newegg team automatically uploads a copy of its product catalog to iGoDigital on a daily basis. This allows iGoDigital to know and understand which memory products Newegg offers on their site at any given time.

Once this file is received, our proprietary algorithms match the memory products carried by Newegg with the vast database of devices which iGoDigital tracks.   These devices include desktops, notebooks, motherboards, mobile phones, digital cameras, and more.   Once the compatibility has been verified by our systems, the relationship is published to the Newegg Memory Finder at Newegg.com.

The iGoDigital accessory finder platform has increased conversion rates on the Newegg site and customer satisfaction has increased due to the ease of finding the right memory products with just a few clicks.

Behavioral Targeting in Product Recommendations

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Eric Tobias

A customer recently asked us about using our personalized product recommendation platform and guided selling tools as a mechanism for behaviroial targeting within their CRM platofrm. We've done a number of CRM installations but it's often the easily forgotten application in behavioral targeting discussions.

We all know an intuitive, considerate customer experience leads to better conversions. It's a fundamental tenet not only online but also for marketing in general. Marketers must "think" for the customers and synthesize all of their collected data (clickstream, explicit, implicit, etc), to achieve a deeper understanding of customer predispositions.

With our behavioral targeting engine, marketers can better grasp customers' needs and interests. Consequently, we can provide recommendations and offers that map back to those needs to improve the experience before they ask you how. Behavioral targeting is a piece of this puzzle and can effectively deliver this. Marketers just tend to forget this application from time to time.

Mobile Shopping Takes Hold

Thursday, January 21, 2010 by Eric Tobias

Marketers and retailers have been waiting for the m-commerce revolution, and, according to a recent report from Motorola, more than one-half of Internet users worldwide made a mobile device part of their shopping activities in December 2009.

Generation Y respondents came out ahead on every measure of mobile shopping activity that Motorola studied, while boomers lagged behind. In some cases, the usage gap was significant. Gen Y users, for example, were 6.5 times as likely as baby boomers to have gotten coupons or special offers via mobile. And crucially, they were more than three times as likely to have made a mobile purchase over the past two weeks.

If you have been around anyone in Gen Y lately, this data should not come as a surprise. The mobile phone has become an extension of the modern personality. This report is significant, however, because it demonstrates the pace at which retail is shifting. In order to service the coming generations, retailers have to maintain a mobile presence and the need is now.

Additionally, we believe this report underscores the importance and need for personalized product recommendations and guided selling within the retail space. Consumers are reaching out for help because today's retail environment is light on service and heavy on choice. Consumers want a trusted voice to help them with their buying decisions.

The easiest, most convenient way to achieve this for Gen Y, is clearly through their phone.

Amazon.com Ink Finder

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Eric Tobias

Utilizing iGoDigital's accessory finder platform, Amazon.com's Ink & Toner Finder displays 3 simple choices to help consumers find and select the right Ink. Select the brand of your printer, select the series of your printer, and/or select the model of your printer.

iGoDigital then queries the hundreds of thousands of products sold by Amazon to display the compatible ink or toner for the selected printer.

iGoDigital's Data Services team maintains the product compatibility data for hundreds of product categories. This ensures the matching Ink is always displayed with the appropriate printer.

iGoDigital provides accessory finders on a Software as a Service (Saas) basis for a variety of verticals, including consumer electronics, automotive, and home improvement. These decision tools help remove customer confusion and increase a consumers confidence to make the best purchase decision. Accessory Finders, such as the Amazon Ink & Toner Finder, typically increase category conversion rates by 20% to 40%.

Personalized Recommendations in Healthcare

Monday, January 18, 2010 by Dan Hanrahan

iGoDigital is sharply focused on product finders, guided buying tools, and product recommendations in retail; however we always keep an eye to what others are doing in the space.

Here's an interesting example of how one company is approaching personalized recommendations to improve health and lives. They call it the "Personal Genome Assistant". They are looking at your medical history and conditions and the ingredients of supplements and medicine to recommend healthcare products. It is an interesting, but niche, approach. - Check out their Youtube video for more:

www.youtube.com/watch

The Value of a Recommendation

Saturday, January 16, 2010 by Eric Tobias

My wife and I are in the process of evaluating schools for next year for our middle daughter. Abbie Grace is in a tough spot based on where her birthday falls. She is too young for kindergarten but her personality and interests make a traditional pre-school environment a challenge.   We narrowed our options down to 2 schools but we ended up with equal admiration for both.

So as a parent, what do you do?

We started asking for recommendations.   We talked to a couple of friends who had sent their children to the schools of consideration.   We talked to peers who were also going through the same evaluation.   We visited the schools we were considering to make our own evaluation.    After all of these inputs, we decided on School A, in large part, based on a couple of negative recommendations regarding School B.

This process got me thinking.....isn't this the same process consumers go through when evaluating the purchase of a new product?   Sure it is.

Think about the last time you bought a new TV, a new refrigerator, or a new car.    Maybe you went to the store, maybe you did some research online, but I would imagine at some point in the process, you received a recommendation from someone which influenced your decision.   It might have been a friend, it might have been a co-worker, it might have even been a store employee.

As consumers move more of their purchases online, the need for recommendations online only increases.   We all seek validation for the purchase decisions we make and with the endless sea of product options available today, the more a recommendation becomes important.