Finish Line implements Guided Navigation

09 Jun '10

3 min read

Endeca Technologies, Inc., a search applications company, announced that leading athletic retailer The Finish Line, Inc. has launched a new mobile shopping site, m.finishline.com, built on top of the same Endeca eCommerce search and merchandising technology that powers www.finishline.com. Deployed in conjunction with Unbound Commerce's Mobile Presence software product, as well as additional technology partners from the Endeca Extend program, the new mobile site has helped Finish Line boost searches from mobile users and drive business originating from m.finishline.com to account for three percent of the company's total online sales. In May 2010, eight percent of Finish Line's total Web traffic originated from a mobile device, up from just two percent in previous months.

“We wanted to take advantage of the great shopping experience we already had on www.finishline.com and bring that over to our new mobile site. Endeca's site search and Guided Navigation capabilities were driving factors in unifying this experience,” said Roger Underwood, senior vice president of eCommerce for Finish Line. “The last thing we wanted was to have separate Web properties with different product data and maintenance requirements. Our mobile implementation was really just a matter of integrating off our existing website, allowing us to lean on the strength of our Endeca implementation. We had m.finishline.com up and running within four weeks.”

Unbound Commerce used the open application-programming interfaces (APIs) of the Endeca Information Access Platform to connect its Mobile Presence platform to Endeca's search and merchandising technology. This new, integrated product helped Finish Line quickly adapt its existing search and navigation infrastructure over to its new mobile commerce site. This consistency allowed the mobile site to feature Finish Line's online customer reviews, which help shoppers to make a decision between competing brands while visiting one of Finish Line's 670 stores. From a smartphone, shoppers can read reviews by other shoppers with similar tastes to determine the best product while standing in the aisle of the store. Delivering this rich user experience on mobile devices allows Finish Line to convert more visitors into buyers by delivering the most targeted and effective content at the moment a customer needs it.

“Endeca's unique approach to handling structured data, like product databases, and unstructured data, such as customer reviews, can create new features for mobile retailers. The searchable product reviews on Finish Line's mobile site are a perfect example,” said John Andrews, vice president, solutions marketing & product management at Endeca. “U.S. consumers are warming up to the idea of mobile shopping, and our experience working with many of the top-100 online retailers positions Endeca perfectly in the transition from eCommerce to mobile commerce.”

An archived May 11 webinar featuring Finish Line is available here. For more information on how customers like Finish Line are deploying Endeca, view our Retail Experience demo.

Unbound Commerce's Mobile Presence platform supports all the most popular mobile devices and automatically supports new phones as they are released.

Endeca Technologies Inc

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