A savvy transformation for product search engine Lasoo.com.au
| 22 September 2009
| A big win for cross-channel retailers, enabling their marketing messages to achieve further social reach and enhanced return on spend.
Australia’s number one Pre-Shopping portal for bricks-and-mortar retailers, Lasoo.com.au, has had a makeover. The refreshed Lasoo site represents the next leap forward in online Pre-Shop research.
Taking into account the behaviour of online browsers, the site has become more focused on retailers, categories and products; particularly through the leading search and browse features. The site also includes greater personalisation to better cater for each consumer’s needs.
Since launching at the end of 2007, the site has connected more than 3.2 billion product offers with customers ready and willing to buy. According to research conducted by Nielsen Online, one in four consumers who visit Lasoo.com.au go onto purchase the product they found on the site.
The ground-breaking features already available to consumers on Lasoo include:
• Advanced product search using the latest in search technology
• Integrated and dynamic store locator
• Customisable shopping alerts for products and campaigns
• Personalised shopping lists that can be shared and rated by friends and other Lasoo shoppers
• Buy-now links from each product page (where applicable)
• High quality and expandable product images
• Advanced catalogue browsing features.
Building on this success, some of the key improvements of the new-look site are:
Access to all the member benefits using a Facebook, Twitter, Google, Live or Yahoo! login
With users having to remember an ever-growing number of logins and passwords, the new site allows users to access all the member-only community features using their Facebook, Twitter, Google, Live or Yahoo! details, with additional login options available soon. The convenience of being able to log-in with other credentials is an important step to strengthen the Lasoo community.
Recommendation engine
To further improve engagement and user satisfaction, an advanced visitor-driven recommendation engine is available on the relaunched Lasoo.com.au, providing consumers with direct access to the most popular brands, retailers, products and catalogues directly from the home page and other areas of the site.
Product broadcasting
Only Lasoo.com.au provides a separate landing page for every advertised product, whether that product is from a catalogue, press ad or fed directly from a retailer’s ecommerce site. Other than the obvious usability benefits for the browser and the benefits of making these products discoverable by search engines, this also allows users to share products with friends, family and other Lasoo users. This is a big win for retailers as it allows their marketing messages to be spread by consumers to their friends and families – the most powerful marketing medium there is. The redesigned site provides quick access to sharing products on key sites such as Twitter, Facebook and the Lasoo.com.au social shopping site, u.lasoo.com.au. It also allows users to share products via email and another soon-to-be-released feature of the site, ‘Share via SMS’.
Personalised home page
Recognising that visitors can vary in needs and expectation and that all visitors should not be treated the same, members of Lasoo.com.au have their own personalised section on the home page where they can display catalogues from their selected favourite retailers.
An even faster catalogue viewer
The already advanced catalogue viewing platform available on the site has been further enhanced to provide the consumer with additional methods of browsing and searching the latest catalogues.
New branding and logo
A simpler and cleaner logo has been developed in response to consumer feedback. The new logo is easier to read and is instantly recognisable as a shopping-related brand. Research suggests it is now more appealing to a much broader audience.
Technical changes
In addition to the above features, a number of key back-end changes have been made to further improve discoverability of the site to search engines, improve load times and improve accessibility.
As the online landscape continues to change and more purchasing options become available to consumers, Lasoo.com.au will continue to support and promote the products offered by its retailers. The site never stops evolving to meet the ever-increasing expectations of today’s savvy shopper.
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