Fruity

This has been a week of me dealing with different types of fruit. With site search, it's easy to get lost for a few hours because you're really concentrating and there are always more search terms that you can add or tweak.

I realized that I had never made sure that I had covered all of the fruits that are included in our products. I started with lemons and ended up covering every obscure fruit that's on our site.

When I searched for "lemon," I got 194 results:

The search for "lemons" also gave me 194 results:

Sadly, when I looked up "Zitrone" (German for lemon), I only got 24 results:

"Zitronen" (German for lemons) gave me even fewer results:

So, I went to my list and included the singulars and plurals of lemon in both languages:

Once I did this, I ended up with 197 results when I searched for all of these terms:

Of course, lemons led to limes, which led to other citrus fruits. Then, I started on the berries and obscure European berries (what exactly is a Lingonberry?). I think that I have now covered singulars, plurals and any logical misspellings of both. 

It's actually quite a powerful feeling to know that you control a site's search and makes me want to perfect it even more. It's called job security. ;)

Marketing Magik

Just a quick note tonight. I found this gem while searching Pinterest today.

How cool is that? Just a great example of an incredible (and incredibly simple) marketing campaign.

Marketing Magik

The day that we woke up to the garbage men fetching a large piece of our fence out of the alley, I decided to go to Central Market on my work break. The hubby enjoys great food and I felt like he deserved something extra special for the unexpected stress. I approached three men at the wino help desk. When asked if I needed help, I asked if they had any Trocken Rieslings. The man showed me their Trocken Rieslings and I was instantly drawn to this one:

For anyone who understands German, this is Genius Marketing! In the German language, eins = one, zwei = two, drei = three. (To English speakers, "Eins" is pronounced like Heinz, "Zwei" is pronounced like sv-eye, and "Drei" is pronounced like dry.) So, to market their Trocken (German for "dry") Riesling, they made a play on words. Beautiful.

I will show some examples of not-so-genius marketing later on, where foreigners are allowed to play with English words, sometimes to disastrous consequences.

We have yet to try this wine, but that is some damn fine marketing, my friends. I will let you know if it was actually dry.

Ze Wood

In honor of a large part of our fence being blow over when we woke up this morning, my search term for the day will be "wood" and its variations. 

Today, when I did a search for "wood", I got 37 results.



When I searched for "wooden", I got 19 results.

When I searched for "Holz" (German for "wood"), I got 31 results.

So, I decided to combine these words on my Nextopia synonyms list.

Now, when I search for "wood", "wooden" or "holz", I get 81 results.

There doesn't seem to be a German word for "wooden". Must ask my Germans.....

Nextopia eCommerce Site Search

One of the best parts of my job is getting to work on our site search using Nextopia. We have been using it for about a year and a half. My favorite part is the synonyms, as I work for an online German grocery store located in the US. My goal is for all of our customers to be able to find whatever product they're looking for on our site, whether they're using the English word, German word or a horrible misspelling of either one.

 The German language is particularly tricky because of their fondness for compound words. I'll get into more of that later, but for now, I'll give you a brief introduction to my site search goals.

Let's talk about pears. Nextopia seems to have done a great job with English singular and plural nouns. Sadly, they haven't learned to speak German. This is where I come in.

I searched for pear and pears and got 31 results each time. When I searched for Birne (German for "pear") and Birnen (German for "pears"), I got 1 result and 4 results, respectively.

Since my goal is to populate our searches and to have our customers find as many pear-related products as possible, I head to my trusty Nextopia synonyms list. As of today, it contains 63 pages of synonyms. 

(I apologize for the graininess of these photos. I didn't realize that they would look so bad. I guess there's a first time for everything, though.)

I add my additional synonyms to my handy-dandy synonyms list and voila!

31 results for pear, pears, birne & birnen.

However, success is short-lived, as I realized how many other fruits Mother Nature created and how I now have to add them all to my list....