Four Shopping Search Engines
What would Carrie Bradshaw do if the event of the season were a mere few weeks away and she needed to buy herself a new dress? If she wanted to find the perfect match to her Manolos or spare herself the embarrassment of wearing the same frock nine other fashionistas had on, she’d point her famous Mac to ShopWiki.
See, ShopWiki actively scours the Internet to find everything and anything that’s for sale online. What that means is, no other shopping search engine would provide the depth and breadth of dresses ShopWiki could, and with just a few quick clicks of her mouse, Carrie could find a totally unique and figure flattering piece.
But maybe that’s a bad thing. Maybe too much choice would overwhelm the time challenged celebutant. If that’s the case, Carrie could avail herself of ShopWiki’s wealth of useful tools like its color selector or its price ranger to further refine her search. Then she could go deeper still, adding qualifiers like “strapless” to hone in on something sexy or she could read up on what editors and fellow shoppers were saying on ShopWiki’s wiki buying guides.
Once she’s found the head-turning threads, all Carrie’d have to do is pick a retailer she likes. If she needed the dress quickly so she could model it for her friends before the big day, she could find a store that offered rush delivery. If instead price was her number one consideration and she chose to be budget-conscious, she could find the shop that offered the lowest price. The choice would be entirely hers.
But no matter what she chooses, or where she finds it, if she uses ShopWiki, Carrie will be the belle of the ball.
-James Keating, VP of Marketing & Operations
Last year I talked with some folks at Yahoo and Google. They asked me how I would improve the search experience. I instantly thought of my own fashion problem. The current popular search engines assume users know what they are searching for. However I am not this type of users when it comes to apparel shopping. A lot of time I don’t know what I want and what would look great on me. I guess I could search for “dressing stylish and gorgeous” or “how to choose flattering clothes.” I ran these phrases on Google. Believe me, it didn’t help much. Back to the Yahoo and Google folks, I told them search boxes are for people who already have some clues. For people who don’t have clues they need more value-added services. This is when I started StylePointer.com.
The concept of StylePointer is to provide a value-added apparel shopping experience to our users.
Shop by celebrity styles
According to a recent survey from Marketer.com 47% of apparel shoppers get most of their ideas from seeing what other people wear. StylePointer.com makes the life of these shoppers easier by allowing them to shop by celebrity styles. For instance, if a user admires Victoria Beckham’s clean and elegant style, she can click Victoria Beckham from dozens of celebrities and browse through her latest looks. StylePointer.com matches each look with our carefully selected apparel items. Prices range from just a few dollars to over a few hundred dollars. The user can then steal or splurge based on her budget.
Shop by body shapes
We all have this unpleasant experience. We excitingly put on a gorgeous dress just to find out that the dress made our legs look much shorter and our belly much bigger. This is why choosing flattering clothing items is the most important thing in styling. However not everyone knows what apparel styles flatter them the most. StylePointer.com solves this problem by allowing users to shop by their own body shapes. For instance, a user with bottom-heavy (pear shape) body can find tops, dresses, jeans and coats that will look great on them on the “Shop by Pear Shape” page. Easy, isn’t it? We want to make apparel shopping easy, effective, and fun.
-By Vivian Wong, Co-founder & VP of Product Management
Shopping for dresses on TheFind.com. Imagine that it’s a Friday afternoon and you’re thinking about summer (if you live in the Bay Area, it’s hard not to since it’s practically 100 degrees!) The last couple of days, you have been digging through your closet to find clothes to wear in this crazy heat. The weekend is about to start, and you are seriously running out of cute options. You are ready, willing and able to shop around! Where to start?
Our site, TheFind.com, was built just for times like these. We are a search engine strictly devoted to shopping that finds every product, brand, store and boutique online - and gives you the very best choices right on the first page of results. When you arrive at the homepage, you are greeted with our “hot searches” – these are hot items that others have searched for. It gives you a feel for current trends and sparks ideas on what you might want to look for.
You spot the “juicy couture dress” search and click on it – you are immediately treated to a page filled with images of juicy couture dresses in a variety of styles and colors from the most popular stores online. Shop directly from Juicy Couture, or further browse the offerings from Nordstrom, Saks, Bloomingdales, eLuxury, Shopbop, and others. You are served-up a virtual catalog of the web’s best products and stores in just one click!
I really like the pink dress from Bloomingdales – when I hover over the image, a pop-up appears that has even more detailed information about the dress – it even tells me that the address and phone number of the local Bloomingdales in my area. I can save this item to my personal “MyFinds” list and come back to it later (when my boss isn’t standing over my shoulder, ahem) or email it to a friend of mine, asking for her thoughts on whether I can pull off that particular shade of pink (I mean, what are friends for?)
I’m pretty keen on the pink Juicy dress, but think maybe blue is more my style. I click on the “color” icon in the left hand side and am presented with an array of colors from which to choose from – I click on the blue color swatch, hit update and am now looking at some beautiful, azure juicy dresses! The strapless one from Revolve Clothing is hot, and it’s quite a bit cheaper than the one from Nordstrom. I am tempted to cut this post short and whip out my credit card – but first I want to let you know that you can also click on the orange “local” button on the left hand side to show only stores that are physically near you. Or click on the red “sale” button to only view sale items – TheFind.com makes it easy to find the best stores (online or near you) and best deals – for anything from clothing to appliances to sports equipment and everything in between. -Larisa Hall, Vice President, Marketing
L.B.D. – Finding the perfect “Little Black Dress” with StyleFeeder, the personal shopping engine that learns your style. The Little Black Dress — or L.B.D. as it’s known in most circles — is a staple item in any woman’s wardrobe. Versatile, flirty and always “in,” the perfect L.B.D. can be one of the most elusive dresses a girl could search for. I hate shopping at the mall, so an online quest is a given. To make the search as efficient and fun as possible, I turn to StyleFeeder.com.
As you rate items on the site, StyleFeeder learns about your unique sense of style so it can help you find products you like faster, discover new items you’ll love and meet others who share your tastes. By combining these elements, StyleFeeder brings shoppers personalized product recommendations from across the Web. By way of comparison, I began the search for my perfect little black dress by first checking out Google Shopping. The result: 20,000+ listings of anything and everything related to black, dress and little. Not exactly ideal, but these impersonal, overwhelming results are typical with most search engines unless you’re searching for something very specific.
Turning my attention to the real test at hand, StyleFeeder’s personal shopping engine, I know the results will be tailored to suit my own sense of style – unique, fun, but classic with modern twists. I use StyleFeeder to keep track of what I’m shopping for, and I’ve rated hundreds of items on the site, so it has a finely tuned sense of what I’ll like. In fact, I’ll get totally different search results than a 15-year-old girl, or even another 30-something-year-old woman who has a more conservative sense of style than I do. But StyleFeeder can start getting a sense of your preferences with as few as 10 or 20 ratings.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted sleeves for a more formal look or something more modern so I began a general search for “Black Dress.” A photo gallery of visual results was delivered in seconds, based on my search terms and style. I also had access to item detail pages with descriptions, price comparison information (powered by Shopping.com), ratings and comments from other users. I sifted through a few pages of different styles – from sleeveless, to lattice detail to knits and sweater dresses – when I determined that sleeveless might be more of what I’m looking for in a summer dress. I then take a few seconds to rate some sleeveless dresses – love it or hate it using StyleFeeder’s rating tool — to help the personal shopping engine narrow my results even further; the site can incorporate this new preference data in real-time.
It only took me a few seconds to zero in on my favorite – a black, semi-sheer dress from Juicy Couture with sequin detail around the collar (http://www.stylefeeder.com/item/3nr2gkk2) – great for a summer night on Nantucket or a fabulous fundraising event. StyleFeeder also recommends similar dresses, and shows me items that other people who like this dress also like. I add the dress to my StyleFeed, and because I’ve downloaded the StyleFeeder application on my Facebook page, all of my friends will see the dress in their feeds. I love showing off my latest finds with friends through StyleFeeder – besides, it helps ensure that we won’t show up to an event wearing the same outfit!
-Dina Pradel, VP, Marketing – StyleFeeder
