If you hope to be a rising young retail star, you’ll need to immerse yourself in the tech breakthroughs that will move your organization into the next decade. One major innovative strategy that fully exploits the connection between technology and online retailing is the use of Cloud Data Services. Here, web searches are united with web site query data using cloud services to zero in on target markets.
A Microsoft Research study, "Data Services for E-tailers Leveraging Web Search Engine Assets," underscores the value of three cloud data services--entity synonym, query to entity, and entity tagging. It reveals how smaller E-tailers can provide the rich user experiences larger online retailers currently offer.
While query to entity and entity tagging are currently still being developed, Microsoft’s entity synonym service is available today. Microsoft research analysts note that online retailers like Amazon have silos of web-related consumer data, including queries, search results and products purchased. Big retailers will analyze this valuable data, while smaller retailers lack either the manpower or budgets to follow suit.
Microsoft claims small- to mid-size E-tailers can finally afford to mine this data. The study notes that site visitors often use alternative strings to refer to the same named entity. For example, "Canon EOS T4i Digital SLR Camera," “canon 650d” and “canon kiss x6i.” When this happens, the product search won’t return the product entity named ”Canon EOS T4i Digital SLR Camera” for a “canon 650d” query if it fails to recognize that they are synonymous. Microsoft’s entity synonym data service solves this problem to significantly improve the users’ search experience.
Bing Shopping, Bing image search and Bing video search use synonyms to improve their search quality. The synonyms are mined using a number of data assets collected by Bing. Knowledge of synonyms can improve product searches, local searches or people searches.
As a rising young retail executive, you need to identify what you can or should deploy on the cloud. This assessment can be performed by your IT person or by a cloud consulting firm that provides cloud strategy and service implementation. The one thing you’ll need to do is to fully acquaint yourself with the workload and characteristics of both your existing and proposed systems.
Cloud data services can level the playing field for your small- to mid-size web-based retailing organization. Moving “up to the cloud” means you won’t have to deploy physical infrastructure like file and e-mail servers, storage systems or shrink-wrapped software. The "anywhere, anytime" availability of cloud-based solutions ensures easy collaboration among business partners and employees using today’s increasingly powerful browsers. For small retailers and startups, cloud services also provide access to advanced capabilities without adding an IT team to the payroll.
Image courtesy of twobee/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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