The document outlines the 2017 product roadmap for Searchspring, highlighting key updates in merchandising, personalization, and the development of a unified 'relevancy API.' It emphasizes enhancing retail capabilities through automation, improved customer targeting, and tailored shopping experiences. Additionally, it introduces a beta program for user feedback and community engagement to refine the product offerings.

1. 1
2017 Product Roadmap Preview Webinar

2. Agenda
1.) Introduction
2.) Roadmap
3.) Beta Program
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3. Product Leadership Team
Gareth - CEO - Product Vision
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Julia - Product Designer
Adam - Jr. Product Manager

4. Introduction

5. 2017 SearchSpring Product Updates
● Merchandising: Putting retailers in the driver's seat
● Personalization: Present products tailored to shopper’s individual
preferences
● Unified “Relevancy API”: The SearchSpring API powers digital
commerce experiences
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6. ● Increase gross margin
○ Automatically boost items based on item-level gross margin
○ Promote house brands
○ Gain pricing leverage with manufacturers/brands by promoting their product
○ Attract “Full Price” shoppers by showcasing higher quality brands
● More automation (save time)
○ Automate the ordering of products on search, category and brand pages
○ Use metrics to continually optimize product placement
■ CTR, conversion, revenue-per-visit, etc
○ “Set it and forget it” rules
● Tools for fast fashion and high-turn retailers
○ Easier control of in-stock vs out-of-stock items
○ Showcase new and in-season items
Merchandising Vision
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7. Personalization Vision
● Create the traditional in-store experience online
● Know your customers
● Adapt product listings pages and widgets to the shopper
● Easier & faster shopping for customers
○ Less clicks to get to product pages
○ More engagement at the product level
● Consumers want:
○ To be personally greated
○ Feel like retailers know them (without being creepy)
○ Adapt the online experience to their needs
● Marketers want:
○ To richly target consumers with relevant offers (need rich customer profiles)
● What not to do:
○ Don’t promote irrelevant product to customers
■ I bought cologne on Sephora, then received promotions for makeup
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8. ● 70% of traffic is now mobile - speed is critical
○ Search query spelling is getting worse
○ “Questions” are more complex
● Answer complex customer questions
○ “I want a black dress for New Year’s Eve”
○ “Which herbal teas help with sleep”
○ I like this product but the color isn’t right - “what else do you have?”
● Merchandising needs
○ Show the customer similar items from the same brand / category
○ Automatically include recent promotions in Autocomplete
○ Whitelist & blacklist capabilities across product recs and autocomplete
● Developer needs
○ Easy to consume on web, mobile, in-app and back-office
■ Fast response times, small payloads, CORS headers
○ Consistent access to products and related content anywhere on the site
○ Offload search-related machine learning and NLP to SearchSpring
■ More time for app development, frontend and integrations
SearchSpring API Vision
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9. Roadmap
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10. 2017 Product Roadmap
● Q1: Merchandising
● Q2: Personalization
● Later: Unified “Relevancy API” (aka Greyhound)
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11. Merchandising
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12. What’s New?
● Product Boosting Rules on category pages (beta)
● Improved Visual Merchandising Interface
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13. Product Boosting Rules
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14. Product Boosting Rules
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● Allows merchants to control which kinds of
products to promote and where
○ Example: Always Promote On Sale Products

15. Product Boosting Rules
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16. Product Boosting Rules
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17. Product Boosting Rules
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18. Product Boosting Rules
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19. What’s Next?
● Global Product Boosting Rules
● Exclude Rules
● Merchandising Improvements
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20. Product Exclude Rules
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21. Product Exclude Rules
● Allows merchants to control which kinds of
products to hide, and where
● Visual Merchandising: What doesn’t belong?
○ For Example: I don’t want red items to ever show up in this Blue
items campaign
● Global Rules: What should never show up?
○ Example: Always hide Out of Stock Products
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22. Enhanced Triggers, Additional Banners & Bulk Import
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23. Bulk Product Import
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24. Additional Banners & Enhanced Triggers
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25. Personalization
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26. Personalization
● Discover your shoppers needs and wants
● Leverage preferences to elevate relevant products
● Create a custom tailored shopping experience
● Provide transparency as to how search results are
being customized
26Jenny

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Personalization
Product listings for ‘Party Dress’ without
personalization

28. Personalization
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We prompt new customers to tell us their preferences

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Personalized results for Jenny

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● Jenny’s profile continues to build as she
interacts with the site
● Her profile follows her throughout the site

31. 31Jenny’s preferences continue to influence search and category pages

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33. Unified “Relevancy API”
(aka Greyhound)
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34. Unified “Relevancy API”
● Unification: Consistent functionality across all endpoints
○ If you can do it in search you should also be able to do it on product recs
● Faster: All of our relevancy smarts and promotional intelligence, even
faster than before
● Easier to Use: More documentation, frontend starter SDKs, richer
payload control (get more / less data as needed), CORS support
● Content Integration: Promotional pages, Blog entries, shipping
information, product reviews, social posts, POS/offline data, etc.
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35. Beta Program
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36. The SearchSpring Beta Program
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37. ● A new feedback program for our
users
● Your chance to play an active role
● Capping at 25 beta testers: Some
open spots remain, so email us!
● Benefits: Get the newest features,
influence how our product works
for you
● Always evolving, so let us know
your thoughts
The SearchSpring Beta Program
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Survey: What kind of Merchandising do you use?

38. Community Feedback
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● New community feedback forum for all: searchspring.userecho.com
● A space to ask questions, submit ideas, vote up and offer thoughts
on the ideas of others
● Allows SearchSpring to actively see what we can improve, what the
demand is, and the different needs of merchants.

39. Thank you.
Email me to join our beta program!
adam@searchspring.com
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