CAMBRIDGE, Mass., December 8, 2003 - iPhrase® Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of self-service search and navigation software, today announced that its One StepTM self-service search and navigation platform is powering all of the search functions across the online luxury retail site, www.eLUXURY.com .
Using One Step, customers can access anything within eLUXURY's extensive product catalog by typing plain English questions to get exact responses to their queries. One Step also helps customers find direct answers from eLUXURY's online Help section when they need specific support questions answered. One Step's user-friendly, accurate and intuitive interface brings a powerful e-commerce search and navigation engine and direct support self-service solution together into one intuitive and simple to use platform.
eLUXURY chose iPhrase's One Step to give customers an online shopping experience similar to that at the high-end retail stores from which eLUXURY's products are drawn. eLUXURY benefits from the One Step self-service search and navigation solution because it is flexible enough to support content across its entire site, including the company's product catalog and all of the customer service and support information in eLUXURY's Help section.
"eLUXURY customers are seeking luxury merchandise and as a result expect a very high level of service," said Ann Hepler, president, eLUXURY. "We needed to implement a solution that was both user friendly and seamless, and at the same time robust enough to handle an ever changing product catalog. One Step provides us with precisely what we needed and helps our customers quickly and easily find the products that meet their needs, as well as provide service and support information and guidance."
eLUXURY selected iPhrase One Step based on a number of additional key criteria:
· Direct Experience in the Retail Space: iPhrase has a strong presence in the retail market that includes work with customers such as Staples, Neiman Marcus and Restoration Hardware
· High Out of the Box Performance and Industry Leading Relevancy: One Step offers the industry's highest results relevancy out of the box and after tuning. This eliminates the most common frustration of users - wading through long lists of irrelevant results.
· Intuitive and Flexible Interface: One Step supports a wide range of user expressions and automatically corrects for misspellings, word order, synonyms and abbreviations. For example, an eLUXURY customer might search for a Louis Vuitton handbag by typing "LV handbags" or "Vuitton handbags" One Step has the capability of understanding all of those terms as synonymous expressions and allows customers to be more specific with their search.
· Superior Usability - One Step offers full support for search and navigation interaction styles, giving eLUXURY and other businesses the option to expose either or both mechanisms in any self-service application.
· Personalized Presentation - One Step dynamically generates a personalized self-service view for every individual user based on the intent of each query. This view can also be leveraged to include targeted cross-sell and up-sell and intelligent customer service escalation.
· Richer Usage Intelligence Analytics - One Step produces a rich profile of users' needs and intent in their own words. These comprehensive logs include extensive metadata on every facet of users' self-service interactions, including the key topics and concepts that users requested.
· Added Management Console - One Step includes an intuitive web-based Management Console that empowers business users to manage the self-service solution end-to-end -from interactively testing the system, to reviewing analytic reports, to configuring the solution for specific business needs.
"eLUXURY is an acknowledged leader in the luxury e-tail space and continues to attract high value customers," said André Pino, senior vice president of marketing at iPhrase Technologies. "eLUXURY ultimately selected iPhrase because of our ability to deliver an online user experience that is consistent with the eLuxury brand and clientele. We're excited to add eLUXURY's name to our list of industry leading retail customers."