Thursday, November 17, 2016

Psycho-Search: Finding Products that Fit the Customer's Interests

Studies show that most on-line shoppers start their shopping with a search. Sometimes this search is for a specific product ("Samsung Galaxy S7"), sometimes the search is for the characteristics of what they want ("big reliable smartphone") and sometimes the search is for whatever the customer has in mind ("smartphone that teenage girls like"). Ultimately the customer's goal is to find products that fit what they want.

But do product search results satisfy customers? Some certainly do. Search any electronics site for "Samsung Galaxy S7" and you'll get the devices and accessories you want. But some searches are not handled as well by the industry leaders.

For example, search for "reliable sturdy smartphone" and here is what you'll see on one site:


Failed search for reliable study smartphone

Where are the smartphones? Are these the three most reliable or sturdy products on the site? The point of the user's search seems to be missed.

Here is another example, searching for "flashy smartphone" this time:


Failed search for flashy smartphone

Again the site missed the user's interest in smartphones, and in this case completely missed what the word "flashy" meant.

Enter PsychoSearch from Cognilyze, the psychology-based big data company. PsychSearch uses our psychological profiles of both products and customers to give you the products you want for searches such as these. PsychoSearch results can be displayed as search results or as recommendations along the side.

First, we see that the word "smartphone" relates to several product categories, and we narrow the scope to smartphones, smartphone accessories and the like.

Second, we see that words like "flashy," "reliable" and "sturdy" relate to attributes of products. Our unique product analysis engine associates products with a wide variety of attributes, each of which identifies a possible reason that the product is purchased. So even if the word "sturdy" doesn't appear on a product's web page, we know which products are sturdy based on the materials they are made of, the way they are made, and the reviews that the products get from previous buyers. Even if the word "flashy" doesn't appear on a product's web page, we know if it's flashy based on lots of other indicators, such as the color, the size, comments in reviews about friends noticing, etc. Smartphones with Gorilla Glass 4 and metal cases are sturdy regardless of whether the word "sturdy" appears on the page, and hot pink phones are flashy regardless of whether the word "flashy" appears on the page.

Third, we add in our profile of the customer's (searcher's) motivations and preferences. Cognilyze always has a few thousand products ready to recommend each customer, each of which matches that customer's preferences and motivations. Before searching the store's whole product inventory for search matches, we search the products that we know match the customer's profile. In this way, the top search results will be those that the user is most likely to want.

Cognilyze is seeing great interest in Psycho-Search, as e-commerce sites are looking at how search can better deliver what customers want. If Google gives different search results for different users, why shouldn't product search on on-line stores give personalized results for the customer searching?

Want to know how Psycho-Search can help your customers find the products they want? Contact us now!