E-Commerce Site Search Tools And Product Attributes: The Series (Part 2 of 3)

Product Attributes In The Online World

This is the second part of a series concerning product attributes. Previously, we discussed what product attributes are, and the use of product attributes in the real, off line world. Today, we wish to cover how product attributes can be employed in the online world to facilitate commercial success.

Product attributes are essential to commerce in the real, offline world. They are so important that we use them all the time. In fact, they are so important and ubiquitous that we use them without thought.

So how could a web merchant expect to be successful without mimicking the offline world by supporting product attributes in the online store?

In our view, supporting product attributes in site search is absolutely essential, since customers express their interest in products using them. CyberSiteSearch has been designed from the beginning to provide comprehensive support for product attributes.

In fact, we implement an extensible data base solution that allows merchants to specify any set of attributes that makes sense for their product mix. These attributes are used in site searches to help site visitors to rapidly locate and purchase products, using the vocabulary that is most natural to employ for the type of product.

But of course, we must first obtain product attribute information before making it available in site search.

How NOT To Obtain Product Attribute Information

Obviously, a site search tool like CyberSiteSearch must obtain product attribute information to be able to use it in searches. Today, we’ll briefly discuss how not to obtain that information.

As stated in one of Google’s official blogs:

“Before, there was simple web crawling which involved indexing the content on a website. But there were challenges: sometimes the web crawler could not find all pages on a site, and, even if a page was crawled, it was often difficult for a computer-based system to understand the meaning of the content.”

Think about this: how could a search engine spider examine every page on a merchant site, digest all of the information on each and every page, and attach real meaning (attribute values) to words and phrases found on the page?

How could a search engine spider possibly know that the word “lilac” is a scent and not a color? Or “fair trade” is a specific certification given to coffee? Or 6 inches is a diameter and not a length?

Web crawlers are poorly suited to organize detailed product content into a searchable structure across all of the products on a web site.

But merchants can, and that is the topic of our next part.