Interview with BrilliantShopper.com CEO Phillip Lan
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Written By Reprise Media | June 2, 2005 | Share This
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This week we talk to BrilliantShopper.com CEO Phillip Lan about his firm’s place in the vertical search universe, partner relationships, favorite shopping sites and more.
1. Much has been said of Brilliant Shopper’s indexing capabilities. We’d like to know a little bit more about your algorithms. Given the built-in advantages of more established players such as […]
This week we talk to BrilliantShopper.com CEO Phillip Lan about his firm’s place in the vertical search universe, partner relationships, favorite shopping sites and more.
1. Much has been said of Brilliant Shopper’s indexing capabilities. We’d like to know a little bit more about your algorithms. Given the built-in advantages of more established players such as Google and MSN, how do you expect to build a product that can compete on a relevancy level with the “big guns”?
Well, let me just start off by emphasizing that Brilliant Shopper is a specialized shopping search engine designed to intelligently address commerce-related queries. Because people don’t visit Brilliant Shopper to find out the population of Greece or Babe Ruth’s batting average, we’re able to focus all of our efforts on doing one thing well instead of trying to be all things to all people.
Since we focus only on relevancy as it pertains to shoppers (a subset of all internet searchers), we’ve been able to develop a very robust shopping-focused search engine. Our algorithm identifies which web pages are most likely to contain information such as pricing, reviews and coupons associated with the searched term, and our interface displays the information in an organized, easy-to-use manner.
We believe that the best approach to increasing relevancy for shoppers is through the development of focused vertical (and even sub-vertical) search technologies, and our team is working hard to bring that vision to market.
2. A shopper arrives at your site without a clear idea of what they want. They only know they’re looking for, say - a Father’s Day gift. How does Brilliant Shopper guide them through this process? How would the user experience be different (and better) than on a site such as Froogle or PriceGrabber?
Today, online shopping is a very fragmented experience. Because most shopping sites only focus on one or two areas such as reviews or price comparison, shoppers are often required to visit multiple websites during their shopping process. They’ll go to one website to find gift ideas, another for product reviews, yet another to compare prices and still others to find online coupons.
Our goal is to create a more comprehensive e-commerce experience. In addition to our shopping engine we’re developing the website into a shopping search portal capable of guiding shoppers through the entire research and purchasing cycle.
For example, we’ve created a Gift Ideas section to assist people shopping for gifts. This is anchored by our unique Gift Ideas Search Engine capable of helping shoppers find additional gift ideas across the web.
3. What improvements has your team made to Brilliant Shopper in the last few months? How are you improving upon the “motherboard” results I turned up last month during a search for “mother’s day”?
Obviously, we’re fine-tuning our search algorithms all the time. We’ve also added a Related Search function to help shoppers narrow their focus and now provide easy access to relevant coupons and reviews from the main search results page. Later this year, we’re rolling out several new features that will further enhance relevancy for shoppers.
I believe the issue you mentioned was corrected back in April…
although there remains some strong opinions within Brilliant Shopper’s engineering team as to whether or not motherboards are appropriate Mother’s Day gifts.
4. Chris Sherman criticized your firm in Search Engine Watch (albeit it, very gently) for failing to disclose your partner relationships and not giving users an idea of where your content originates. What would you say to this? Why shouldn’t your engine be held to the same standards as the all-purpose engines?
That’s a good question. We generally don’t discuss third-party relationships due to contractual and/or competitive reasons. I can tell you that at Brilliant Shopper, our primary objective is to deliver the best user experience possible for online shoppers. Our research suggests that, presently, shopping relevancy can be best achieved through the integration of Brilliant Shopper’s proprietary technology with additional best-in-class technologies. From an online shopper’s perspective, what’s important is that Brilliant Shopper successfully provides the best shopping search experience possible, not how we do it.
My point to Chris Sherman was that if someone goes to buy a Lexus, they want to get the best car possible. They’re probably not all that interested in who Lexus partnered up with to build the cup-holders.
5. Online shopping is obviously a big part of your life right now. What three online merchants could you personally not live without and why?
Well, working at a shopping search engine, you quickly realize that nearly every merchant has lots of competition selling the same exact things and is somewhat replaceable, so I’ll tell you about the type of merchants I enjoy visiting instead.
IRobot.com and RobotStore.com are two of my favorites. I love science fiction movies, and I’m always interested in how real technologies will change our lives. Robotics have become a recent hobby because I think the software foundation is finally in place to allow robots to do some pretty cool stuff.
With three kids, I find that sites like The Disney Store and FAO.com are great. And Blue Nile can be helpful in smoothing out the bumps when work takes me away from the family one too many times.
Then there’s Amazon.com - the original online superstore. I do find it interesting, however, that as they broaden their product offering beyond in-house products, Amazon seems to be moving in the direction of shopping search engines such as Brilliant Shopper.
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