Certona Personalizes Google Commerce Search Results on Camping.com

Tabcom Living has relaunched Camping.com. The updated site, which sells camping gear and apparel, including tents, grills, knives, shoes and jackets, went from offering a few thousand products to the current inventory of 30,000.

“Our focus is adding more and more products and to be able to cast the widest possible net,” says Ben Pfeifer, CEO of Tabcom Living, a sister company to online niche site operator Tabcom, No. 230 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

The company installed new site search technology from Google Commerce Search and added personalization  software from Certona to help customers more easily find products.

If a customer searches for tents, for example, Google’s technology might retrieve 100 results, but the personalization software would sort and provide the results based on the customer’s viewing or ordering history, Pfeifer says

Other priorities for Camping.com include improving the site’s loading speed and adding content such as videos.  “We are interested in rolling out video content, and we see videos as great way to show solutions,” says Pfeifer. “The goal is to engage visitors and not just to push products. If someone is getting educated about some options available to them, they may not be ready to buy just then.”

Before it was moved to Tabcom Living, Camping.com was run by Tabcom, which owns and operates several online niche sites such as Dog.com, Ferret.com and Horse.com. Tabcom Living also operates Bike.com, a bicycling accessories and parts web retailer, which launched in April 2010.

Source: Internet Retailer