Ultimate Electronics
Enhanced Search Engine Design, Cutting-Edge Product Comparison Tools
Quinn Interactive implemented a guided search engine for Ultimate Electronics, reinventing their website as a an effective tool for product research and comparison. A key objective for the site is to motivate visitors to come to an Ultimate Electronics superstore.
The Client
Ultimate Electronics is a private consumer electronics company and an industry leader in home and car entertainment equipment, with 32 superstores in nine states throughout the Midwest, the Great Plains and the Pacific Southwest. The company provides the industry’s most comprehensive selection of name-brand consumer electronics with an emphasis on limited-distribution and mid-to-upscale brands. Their superstores are distinctive for their multiple home theater and audio demonstration rooms.
The Challenge
The backbone of Ultimate Electronics’ business plan is a superlative in-store customer experience. Because this first-hand experience is vital to Ultimate Electronics’ retail model, the company does not use their website for online sales, but instead as a customer tool for comprehensive product research. This means that excellent search engineering is essential. The old ecommerce website was not fulfilling this function. The website’s search engine was awkward, and search requests would often yield insufficient information. The company wanted to use Guided Commerce, part of Omniture SiteSearch, WebSideStory’s industry-leading search and information management technology, to create a more dynamic and useful search engine and a more efficient content management structure. WebSideStory brought in Quinn Interactive to design and implement these improvements.
The Solutions
Information Architecture Consultation
For Quinn Interactive, one of the prime elements of this project was helping Phil Schmidt, Internet Manager of Ultimate Electronics, reconceptualize the information architecture of the site. Online product information had been divided into numerous sub-categories that made search functionality too rigid for effective navigation. After QI’s consultation, product information was streamlined to produce more relevant, helpful search results.
Information Architecture Design
With the new information architecture in place, Quinn Interactive went to work implementing Guided Commerce. Through Guided Commerce, Quinn Interactive designed a website tool that utilizes facets—advanced information filters—to create dynamic search criteria that automatically readjust based on the parameters of each individual search.
Users can now easily refine their searches by combining factors such as price, brand and product size. Every search produces descriptions and photos of just the products satisfying the current criteria. It’s easy for viewers to refine or switch their criteria, for example changing model size while retaining the same price range of their previous search. Users never get an empty search result, and always see relevant information to entice them to visit a superstore.
Exciting New Feature: “Will it Fit?”
Quinn Interactive also created a special solution, a “Will it Fit?” Wizard, which takes the dimensions of a visitor’s TV cabinet or space, and finds television models that will fit within those dimensions.
Excellent Service
“Quinn Interactive did a great job, specifically in the area of response time,” says Phil Schmidt. “Any issue I brought up would be resolved very quickly, and they were very good at translating my needs. I would describe what I needed on the site, and they would come up with the programming to get it done. They were also a great go-between with all the other companies involved. When we were getting ready for a conference call, for instance, they would help me understand how to address certain issues with the other participants, or else they would address the issue themselves. Quinn Interactive isn’t just about programming ones and zeros.”
