Q: What is different about your product recommendations this year?
A: In the first quarter, we began testing the recommendations space as a way to inform shoppers about products that they might not otherwise find out about through the relevancy algorhithm. Using RichRelevance tools, we increased the amount by which certain items were represented in the recommendations space by 5% to 10%.
by Darren Vengroff
Online product recommendation systems have been around for almost as long as e-commerce. They all share the common goal of recommending items a particular person is most likely to be interested in at a given time. In aiming for this common goal, however, recommendation systems take a wide variety of different approaches.
It’s Amazon’s golden goose: an aureate treasure chest perched on the top of almost every page. The feature, called the “Gold Box,” is a collection of items on sale. It’s one of the most trafficked areas on the site and consistently brings many shoppers back to Amazon every day.
Employees say that what they like about working at Richrelevance is the collegial yet challenging environment that management fosters.
The 4-year-old company ranked No. 1 for employers of 25 to 50 workers and No. 4 overall as a workplace.
Fast-Growing Provider of Personalized Recommendations to World’s Largest Online Retailers Places First in 25-50 Employee Category
San Francisco – May 1, 2009 – RichRelevance™, the leading provider of next-generation personalization and product recommendation tools for enterprise-class eCommerce sites, today announced that it won a San Francisco Business Times “Best Places to Work” award. RichRelevance was selected as the #1 best place to work in the 25-50 employee category from several dozen San Francisco Bay Area-based entrants of similar size. Winners were published in the May 1st editions of the San Francisco Business Times and the San Jose Business Journal.
“When I started RichRelevance, I set out to create a world-class company that would develop the smartest, most innovative personalized recommendations technology for online retailers, but I also wanted to create a fun and rewarding place to work for each and every employee,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “From bi-weekly company Happy Hours to periodic company off-sites, and from great benefits to complimentary gym memberships, we really invest in our team members. I’m thrilled that our employees enjoy working at RichRelevance and feel challenged and excited every day; as CEO of a fast-growing and fast-paced company, I couldn’t ask for a better honor.”
RichRelevance was named the winner after its employees completed a confidential online survey rating the following categories: team effectiveness, retention risk, alignment with goals, trust with co-workers, individual contribution, manager effectiveness, trust in senior leaders, feeling valued, work engagement, and people practices. Over 85% of RichRelevance employees were required to complete the survey, and award finalists were determined based solely on these ratings.
“I really enjoy working with such incredible people who both challenge me and make me laugh,” said Albert Sunwoo, Senior Relevance Engineer. “What’s more, we get to work on interesting problems, which has allowed me to learn and grow. I’ve had a blast developing next generation technology with a group of people that celebrate each and every win as a team.”
RichRelevance is growing at a rapid pace and continues to attract top talent from leading Internet and eCommerce companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, Microsoft and CVS.com. In the last half of 2008, RichRelevance doubled its staff, and the company continues to hire aggressively to meet the skyrocketing demand for its fully hosted personalized recommendations offering. The company expanded its executive team in 2008 with key strategic hires including Todd Pearson, former Vice President of Sales at PayPal, as Chief Customer Officer; Darren Vengroff, former Principal Engineer at Amazon.com, as Chief Scientist; and former PayPal executive Tyler Hoffman as VP of Sales.
Since going live with its first customer in the fall of 2007, RichRelevance has served nearly 20 billion individual product recommendations and delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in sales for its enterprise-class retail clients. The company currently delivers an average of 100 million product recommendations a day, a number that is growing as new enterprise-class customers choose RichRecs™ from RichRelevance for onsite product recommendations, and as existing customers go live with other RichRelevance products including MyRecs™ and RichMail™.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the leading provider of next-generation personalization and product recommendation tools for enterprise-class eCommerce sites, including Sears.com. The company’s suite of SaaS-based offerings, including RichRecs™, RichMail™, and MyRecs™, are easily integrated and sustainably increase sales by 5-30% while enhancing the shopping experience. Built on the enRICH™ platform, RichRelevance products offer robust merchandiser control, are exclusively retailer focused, and employ over 20 different recommendation types with cross-placement optimization and a closed-feedback loop to display relevant, clearly-explained product recommendations. Founded and led by the former head of Amazon’s Personalization R&D team, RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco.
E-retailers are better than ever at identifying the type of customer visiting an e-commerce site by browsing and purchasing behavior. And, by comparing her behavior with that of many others, that means they can serve up ever-more-specific, personalized recommendations of products likely to prompt her to click and buy.