HandStands.com offers market innovative, quality and competitively priced accessories for iPod, computer accessories, air fresheners, mouse mats and CD DVD Binders.
The company recently implemented Custom Search Business Edition on its site, so we asked Jade Hansen, their Director of eCommerce, about how their experience has been.
Google: How was the implementation process?
Jade: The implementation was very straightforward and easy. Google obviously knows how to make things easy, while supporting the latest technologies. The various possibilities with XML also made it easy to customize CSBE to work for our needs.
Google: What technology did Custom Search Business edition replace and why?
Jade: CSBE replaced a custom built search that, unfortunately, didn't work as intended. One of our more popular products, known as the Sticky Pad, for instance, never even showed up even if you typed "Sticky Pad" within the search field. It was limitations like this that caused us to go looking for another quick and easy to implement solution.
Google: What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
Jade: There are several benefits from using CSBE. Some of the ones that help us and our customers are the following:
- the familiarity of the search results page. As most know, Google holds the majority of the market share for internet searches, so the familiarity of the search results is a plus for customers. They know what they're looking at and aren't confused with what they see.
- The ability to track search terms. We love being able to view what people are searching for and even being able to act on it. We may receive a search for a color of a product we don't carry. We took advantage of this data and introduced a new product color. It helped make all the difference for our most popular product online.
- We love how we don't need to worry about updating the search index on a weekly basis. Google handles it all for us.
Google: What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?
Jade: A search function on a website can almost make or break a site, especially as the sites grows and adds more and more content. We're glad to be able to take advantage of Google's technology and give it a home on our website.
