Endeca Advances State-of-the-Art in eCommerce and Online Media Through Debut of the Endeca Discovery Suite

Business Wire, Sept 17, 2007

Social Navigation, Search Engine Marketing offerings headline solutions aimed at next-generation eCommerce and online media sites

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., & Shop.org, LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Endeca Technologies, Inc., an enterprise information access software company, today unveiled the Endeca Discovery Suite, a new series of modules that will extend the capabilities of the Endeca Information Access Platform (IAP) and accelerate the development of next-generation eCommerce storefronts and media websites.

Built to increase online revenue by boosting conversion rates and content consumption, the new capabilities will make it possible to rapidly design dynamic websites, accelerate online community building, and integrate online and offline assets. With the Discovery Suite, Endeca will rapidly bring to market new modular capabilities through collaborative research and development.

The suite's first two entries are the Social Navigation Module and Search Engine Marketing Module. Future modules will focus on personalization and recommendations, closed-loop reporting, multi-channel operations, and back-end integrations -- all with integral support for Web 2.0 interactivity.

"In 2001, Endeca pioneered the integration of search, Guided Navigation[R], dynamic merchandising, and Content Spotlighting[TM] capabilities, redefining the search landscape and resetting expectations about the connection between findability and revenue. Search was no longer just a box and a long list of results, but a multi-faceted approach to driving virtually all aspects of the user experience," said Steve Papa, CEO of Endeca. "Developed through collaboration with our customers and our strategic partners, the Endeca Discovery Suite will once again raise the bar -- and expectations -- delivering first-of-their-kind capabilities for the next generation of websites and storefronts. The results will introduce entirely new kinds of revenue streams through the online channel and accelerate both front- and back-end innovation."

Social Navigation module: Boosts conversions and content consumption

Social navigation gives site owners new ways to take advantage of user-generated content they already have. It leverages this increasingly popular content -- product reviews, opinions, ratings, posts, user-generated tags -- as well as contributor profiles to help people discover information and products based on the paths and contributions of individuals with similar needs and preferences.

Endeca's Social Navigation Module can be used with best-of-breed social-media software from Endeca's strategic partners as well as in-house solutions, and includes:

* Content adapters that provide out-of-the-box integration between the Endeca Information Access Platform and best-in-class user-review software from Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews

* Dedicated content-acquisition and indexing capabilities to ingest all types of user-generated content, regardless of source or format

* Tag-extraction capabilities to pull together and reveal common themes, concepts, and entities from text-based reviews, blogs, and posts for use in site navigation, search relevancy, and search-engine optimization

* Tag-based visualization and navigation to complement static and dynamic site navigation, giving users more ways to explore and find desirable content and products

* Meta-relational capabilities to link different content types by common concepts, allowing people to dynamically summarize the user generated content associated to any set of products

* Content-aggregation abilities, combined with Endeca's patented search and Guided Navigation experience, enable the exploration of all reviews and other user-generated content spread across a site or collection of sites by the criteria most relevant to their goal

* Profile-based navigation to help users find information and products by others with similar tastes, desires, and characteristics

* Reference applications to speed development time and ensure best-practices for common use cases

* "On-the-fly" graphical analytics components to improve customer insight and decision making by visually summarizing user-generated opinions into navigable charts and graphs

For more on social navigation applications in eCommerce and online media, see: http://endeca.com/discoverysuite.> Search Engine Marketing Module: Drives and converts site traffic

Endeca's Search Engine Marketing Module improves both organic and paid search strategies, driving qualified traffic and boosting content consumption, click-through rates and conversion rates. It does this by helping popular Internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search, and Ask.com more accurately rank Endeca-powered sites. The module includes multiple, complementary SEO capabilities that make dynamic pages appear as static pages when being crawled or indexed by major Internet search engines, increasing both the number of pages indexed and their overall relevancy ranking. Endeca-powered businesses can automate the creation of literally billions of search-friendly landing pages that lead to increased page views, better customer acquisition, and increased revenue.