MyBuys Messenger - Fall 2008
Cell's Corner: Gearing Up for Holiday
Welcome to the MyBuys Messenger Fall 2008 Newsletter! With holiday lockdown around the corner, we are gearing up for the busiest time of year for all of us. With gas prices soaring, now more than ever, a new crop of shoppers will be turning to the Internet, joining millions of others, for all their gift buying needs. At MyBuys we are here and ready to support you through the holiday season. We have made enhancements to our service and investments in our infrastructure to be prepared for all of our growing number of clients’ websites so that they will be dynamically personalized for every shopper 7x24, no matter how busy things get.
Since our summer newsletter in late June, we have deployed two new releases seamlessly; adding a whole host of capabilities to what was already the most powerful recommendation service. With our delivery model, we deploy upgrades instantly to our software that powers your site and most of you will have no indication that we have just added more functionality. I would like to share the highlights with you so you understand the ever-increasing value of our service:
MyBuys 3.5 was deployed on August 4th, 2008. The theme of this release was scalability across the board. From utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for serving of images, client-side code and other files, to migration to a robust 64-bit architecture, the 3.5 release builds upon our already proven scalability, preparing us for both more clients as well as the upcoming holiday season. Moreover, the release included enhanced capabilities on the personalization front, with new ways to use click behavior to add to consumer profiles, impacting recommendations in email alerts – and new algorithms for the web, also leaning heavily on click-stream data to highlight behavioral trends and influence product recommendations.
MyBuys 3.6 was deployed on September 18th, 2008. The theme of this release was increasing relevance and enhancing our reporting capabilities. We added new filters for product SKU attributes that will give our clients more control over which types of products and which SKUs get recommended as well as new algorithms that refine our consumer price and other attribute affinity so our recommendations are even more on target.
In addition to the enhancements to our technology services, we are growing our company to support you. We are adding an east-coast support team that will be based in our Ann Arbor, Michigan office; we will also be adding staff in just about every department in the company to keep up with the demand for our market-leading service.
I am pleased to report that after 18 months of ardent evangelism, the market for Personalized Product Recommendation (PPR) is hot and steadily growing. You have been the early adopters of this technology, and have reaped the reward of increased AOV and higher conversion rates, while also receiving seamless updates to improve relevancy. Now, the rest of the industry is following and indicators are showing that 2009 will be the year of PPR.
I have been on the road meeting with many of you in your offices and at the recent Shop.org Annual Summit in Las Vegas; it is always a joy for me to hear your insights and get your feedback on how we can best serve you at MyBuys. As the CEO, I have an open-door (and email) policy, so please feel free to reach out to me anytime – rcell@mybuys.com. I wish you all the best as you prepare for the holiday season – you can count on the MyBuys team and our personalization to help with your success.
Warm Regards,
Bob Cell
CEO, MyBuys