Case Study

Ultimate Eletronics

Enhanced Search Engine Design, Cutting-Edge Product Comparison Tools

Quinn Interactive implemented a dynamic new search engine for the Ultimate Electronics website, reinventing the ecommerce website as a significantly more effective product-research and –comparison tool and a more effective vehicle for the company to inform and motivate their customer base.

The Client

Ultimate Electronics is a private consumer electronics company and an industry leader in home and car entertainment equipment, with 32 superstores in nine states throughout the Midwest, the Great Plains and the Pacific Southwest. The company provides the industry’s most comprehensive selection of name-brand consumer electronics with an emphasis on limited-distribution and mid-to-upscale brands, and their superstores are distinctive for their multiple home theater and audio demonstration rooms.

The Challenge

The backbone of Ultimate Electronics’ business plan is a superlative in-store customer experience. Because this first-hand experience is vital to Ultimate Electronics’ retail model, the company does not use their website for online sales, but instead as a customer tool for comprehensive product research. This means that excellent search engineering is essential. The old ecommerce website was not fulfilling this function. The website’s search engine was awkward, and search requests would often yield insufficient information. The company wanted to use Guided Commerce, WebSideStory’s industry-leading search and information management technology, to create a more dynamic and useful search engine and a more efficient content management structure. WebSideStory brought in Quinn Interactive to design and implement these improvements.

The Solutions

Information Architecture Consultation

For Quinn Interactive, one of the prime elements of this ecommerce website project was assisting Phil Schmidt, Internet Manager of Ultimate Electronics, to reconceptualize the information architecture of his company’s website. Online product information had been divided into numerous sub-categories that made search functionality too rigid for effective navigation. After careful consideration and much consultation, the company’s product information was streamlined to produce more powerful, comprehensive search results.

Information Architecture Design

With the new concepts for Ultimate Electronics’ information architecture in place, Quinn Interactive went to work, utilizing WebSideStory’s cutting-edge Guided Commerce technology to reinvent the ecommerce website’s search functionality. Through Guided Commerce, Quinn Interactive designed a website tool that utilizes facets—advanced information filters—to create dynamic search criteria that automatically readjust based on the parameters of each individual search. Users can now easily refine their searches by combining factors such as price, brand and product size. Every search produces a listing of all products falling within the criteria range, including product descriptions and photos. It’s easy for viewers to adjust their criteria, for example changing model size while retaining the same price range of their previous search, and users will never receive an empty search result. Through their expertise in Guided Commerce and information architecture, Quinn Interactive helped Ultimate Electronics create a website that is a much more user-friendly and effective research tool for their audience, creating a more satisfied, better educated customer base, and turning more site visitors into in-store visitors and, most importantly, purchasers.

Exciting New Feature: “Will it Fit?”

To further distinguish the Ultimate Electronics website and add to its usefulness as a research tool, Quinn Interactive created a special solution, a “Will it Fit?” Wizard. This unique feature enables viewers to input the dimensions of their TV cabinet or space, to view and compare the television models that will fit within those dimensions.

Excellent Service

“Quinn Interactive did a great job, specifically in the area of response time,” says Phil Schmidt. “Any issue I brought up would be resolved very quickly, and they were very good at translating my needs. I would describe what I needed on the site, and they would come up with the programming to get it done. They were also a great go-between with all the other companies involved. When we were getting ready for a conference call, for instance, they would help me understand how to address certain issues with the other participants, or else they would address the issue themselves. Quinn Interactive isn’t just about programming ones and zeros.”