Bazaarvoice Announces Free Integration with Site Search & Navigation Leaders: Celebros, Endeca, Mercado, WebSideStory

Businesses online can now extend the impact of search and navigation with authentic customer word of mouth

Chicago, IL – Internet Retailer 2006 Conference & Exhibition – June 5, 2006 –Bazaarvoice, an innovator in helping brands use online word of mouth to build their businesses, today unveiled partnerships with leading site search and navigation firms: Celebros, Endeca, Mercado and WebSideStory. Retailers and other businesses online can now successfully increase conversion and average order value by automatically highlighting top-rated products and services throughout the site.

The partnerships offer free integration of Bazaarvoice’s customer ratings and review platform with the industry’s most popular site search and navigation services. Mutual clients are already benefiting from using product ratings and review data to enhance site search, navigation, and merchandising. PETCO, for example, is using Bazaarvoice and Endeca to achieve a 35% higher conversion and 40% higher average order value with a top-rated products path in each category featuring four and five-star products.

“Tests have shown that conversion rates nearly double on products that receive a positive rating,” said Sam Decker, Bazaarvoice vice president of marketing and products. “Retailers like PETCO are proving that merchandising top-rated products dramatically impacts the bottom line.”

Seamless Integration
The partnerships allow retailers and eCommerce providers to quickly and easily use online word of mouth to enhance Web site navigation, on-site search filtering and merchandising.

• Navigation: Ratings data helps create a highly sought after navigation path for users. With ratings and reviews data from the Bazaarvoice platform, marketers can create a navigation path to allow users to find top-rated products within any category or sub-category. This navigation helps new visitors make a purchase decision by trusting the decisions and opinions of customers who have experienced those products.
  
  
• On-site search: Marketers can now make it quick and easy for Web site visitors to access credible and authentic customer opinions around a specific product or category. Visitors are able to search directly for top-rated products in the site-search box, and sort all search results by customer rating. Marketers may also opt to show top-rated products as the first result of a site-search.
  
  
• Merchandising: Merchandising teams can use ratings and review data to feature and upsell the best products, as determined by their most influential customers, on landing pages, category pages, product pages and product guides. In addition, they can utilize product and reviewer characteristics to highlight products chosen by customers with similar backgrounds and needs.

“Customers trust and respond to honest and authentic opinions from people like them,” said Bazaarvoice CEO Brett Hurt. “We’re pleased to support our clients’ success by offering free integration with the leading providers of site search and navigation.”

Free Integration
Integration is free for joint customers, included as part of Bazaarvoice’s hosted and fully managed solution that combines outsourced technology, community management services, analytics, syndication, and a growing partner network.

About Bazaarvoice
Based in Austin, Texas, Bazaarvoice offers outsourced technology, community management services, analytics, and syndication to encourage and harness word of mouth marketing, and bring it closer to a company’s brand and customer experience. The company’s flagship hosted and fully managed customer ratings and review service allows businesses to enable, encourage, and analyze customer ratings and reviews on their web site. With Bazaarvoice, companies can empower their customers to share honest opinions and influence each other to make more informed and rewarding purchase decisions. Clients like CompUSA, Overstock.com, and PETCO benefit from a credible and reliable customer-to-customer community, without having to delve into complex IT work or the laborious process of community management. Bazaarvoice is a winner of the “Red Herring 100 North America” award by Red Herring magazine. For more information, please visit the company’s web site at www.bazaarvoice.com or email .

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