News

Finish Line launches mobile commerce site

June 6, 2010

Endeca Technologies Inc., a search applications company, has announced that leading athletic retailer The Finish Line, Inc. has launched a new mobile shopping site, m.finishline.com. The site is built on top of the same Endeca e-commerce search and merchandising technology that powers www.finishline.com. Deployed in conjunction with Unbound Commerce’s Mobile Presence software product, as well as additional technology partners from the Endeca Extend program, the new mobile site has helped Finish Line boost searches from mobile users and drive business originating from m.finishline.com to account for three percent of the company’s total online sales. According to a company release, in May 2010, eight percent of Finish Line’s total Web traffic originated from a mobile device, up from just two percent in previous months.

"We wanted to take advantage of the great shopping experience we already had on www.finishline.com and bring that over to our new mobile site. Endeca’s site search and Guided Navigation were driving factors in unifying this experience," said Roger Underwood, senior vice president of e-commerce for Finish Line. "The last thing we wanted was to have separate Web properties with different product data and maintenance requirements. Our mobile implementation was really just a matter of integrating off our existing website, allowing us to lean on the strength of our Endeca implementation. We had m.finishline.com up and running within four weeks."

Unbound Commerce used the open application-programming interfaces (APIs) of the Endeca Information Access Platform to connect its Mobile Presence platform to Endeca’s search and merchandising technology. This new, integrated product helped Finish Line quickly adapt its existing search and navigation infrastructure over to its new mobile commerce site. This consistency allowed the mobile site to feature Finish Line’s online customer reviews, which help shoppers to make a decision between competing brands while visiting one of Finish Line’s 670 stores.

From a smart phone, shoppers can read reviews by other shoppers with similar tastes to determine the best product while standing in the aisle of the store. Delivering this rich user experience on mobile devices allows Finish Line to convert more visitors into buyers by delivering the most targeted and effective content at the moment a customer needs it.