Strands Launches Plug-and-Play Product Recommendation Engine for eCommerce

Business Wire,  June 10, 2008  

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Strands Social Recommender[TM] Shown to Increase Online Sales by up to 35% Through Personalized Product and Content Recommendations

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Strands, a leading developer of social recommendation technologies, today announced the launch of the Strands Social Recommender[TM], a SaaS plug-and-play recommendation engine that can be easily and quickly installed by eCommerce Web sites. The Strands Social Recommender has been proven to increase online sales by up to 35%, by offering site visitors personalized recommendations of new products and content that they might like, in real time.

The Strands Social Recommender can be easily installed through the Strands API or by adding personalization widgets to a retailer's site, and can be up and running in as little as 30 minutes. First time customers have the opportunity for a free 30-day trial. After this point, they have the flexibility to choose from a range of different pricing plans, such as a fixed monthly cost or a combination of a fixed fee and revenue share.

More than 100 online businesses have piloted the Strands Social Recommender, with many customers seeing a significant increase in sales.

The Strands Social Recommender delivers relevant product suggestions to first-time users, as well as offering filtered, personalized results over time to returning customers. These personalized recommendations are based on an individual's 'taste' profile, but don't involve asking the user to rate content or build a profile on each site. No personal data is ever exchanged and each user's interaction remains anonymous and secure.

Key features of the Strands Social Recommender include:

* Cross-product flexibility: Recommendations can be generated across multiple product lines and data models, enabling sites to scale across diverse product, content and service categories.

* Reporting: Business Intelligence reports and visualization tools complement standard Web site analytics to measure the performance of each recommendation. This includes conversion rates, click through rates and session lift.

* Personalized emails: In addition to on-site recommendations, online businesses can opt-in to offer personalized product and content recommendations via multiple marketing channels, including email, to engage users even after they are no longer on the Web site.

* Discovery widgets: Businesses can present content, merchandise, and services to users via fully customizable widgets, available in the dashboard enabling seamless integration for a more engaging eCommerce experience.

"Social recommendation is one of the Web's burgeoning trends and we believe almost every business will soon incorporate it into their online presence," said Jesus Pindado, VP of Business Solutions at Strands. "Traditionally, the only companies that could offer personalized recommendations were those that had substantial resources to develop the technology in-house. Our vision is to offer all businesses - large and small - recommendation features at a minimal cost, so that they can better target their customers and ultimately succeed through better cross-selling and up-selling."

Businesses that are interested in the Strands Social Recommender can sign up at http://bizsolutions.strands.com or contact a Strands Business Solutions executive at sales-sbs@strands.com.

Strands will be demonstrating the Strands Social Recommender at the Internet Retailer 2008 Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, June 9-12 at booth # 1216.

To subscribe to an RSS feed of Strands' news, please visit the company blog at http://blog.strands.com/.

About Strands

Strands develops technologies to better understand people's tastes and help them discover new things they will like. Strands has created a social recommendation engine that provides real-time recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices. The company provides these services across three verticals including personal finance (moneyStrands), social media (lifestreaming site, Strands.com and online and mobile music discovery site, MyStrands) and business solutions (Strands Social Recommender[TM]).

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