Strands Blog

Online Merchants Implement Strands Recommendations
to Enhance Customer Experience and Increase Sales

SHOP.ORG SUMMIT – LAS VEGAS, Nev., September 23, 2009 – Strands Recommender a leading provider of personalization and behavioral recommendations announced today that TravelSmith, a Cornerstone Brands company, Body Glove and MotorcycleSuperstore.com (#223 on Internet Retailer’s Top 500) have selected Strands to employ a new level customer experience throughout their websites.  The sites implementation of Strands Recommender will provide automated cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for visitors of the site based on real-time behavioral data, historical data, and merchandising.

“We chose Strands as a partner because we were confident in their ability to help us cross-merchandise our products appropriately, while driving our online conversion rates. The ultimate result was an enhanced user experience and lift in sales”, said Jeff Miller, Director of Interactive Marketing and E-commerce, Body Glove.

Strands Recommender increases conversion rates and average order values by continuously learning about the behavior across all sections of a website.  This flexibility allows for the most relevant and timely recommendations for each site visitor.  “We are happy to become the partner of choice for a growing number of Internet Retailer Top 500 merchants and look forward to rolling out large-scale infrastructure enhancements and innovative features in the coming weeks,” said Jesus A. Pindado, VP and General Manager, Strands Recommender.

About Strands

Strands is the leading provider of social recommendation technologies that deliver personalized shopping experiences and targeted product recommendations for online shoppers. The Strands Social Recommender™ learns consumer tastes and preferences as they evolve over time and is typically used with email marketing solutions, search engines, shopping carts, and e-commerce platforms.  Strands is headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon and has offices in San Francisco and Madrid, Spain.

To learn more about Strands products and services, visit us at http://recommender.strands.com or call 415.398.4333.

Upon the announcement of Mint’s pending acquisition by Intuit, we had a number of inquiries from people disappointed in the news and wanting to learn more about alternatives to Mint.  It seems a growing number of former Quicken users who have steered away from the tool looking for a free alternative all of a sudden feel that they are being forced to return.

Well, don’t fret because you have other options.

If you are looking for a free personal finance tool as your Mint alternative, moneyStrands has a number of great features to offer including:

Adding Accounts

• Support for more than 8,000 financial institutions, so you can keep refreshing your data automatically with the ability to link your checking, savings, loan and credit card accounts.
• The choice to create manual accounts you can maintain by importing your own data files (CSV, QFX, OFX). This allows you to aggregate all your accounts even if your financial institutions is not on the list.
• The ability to manually key in transactions once you add a manual account.

Insightful Analysis & Comparison

• Widgets that let you know where your money goes, your spending trends and whether or not you are living within your means month-to-month.
• Ability to create custom reports and export data to a CSV file.

Budgeting & Alerts

• Ability to set monthly and annual budgets.
• Ability to configure customizable alerts that let you know of balances running low, large purchases or deposits, budget goals approaching your limit and the like.

Highly Customizable Interface

• A highly customizable widget-based user interface where you can design your own page layout with the personal finance widgets most important to you.
• News feeds from the most popular personal finance portals and blogs.

Security & Privacy

• 256-bit encryption and industry standard security infrastructure. Read more.

Multi-lingual, Multi-Currency

• English and Spanish version of the website.
• Support for 44 currencies.

Mobile Access

• A free iPhone app with unmatched visual drill down spending analysis. Read more.
• A mobile web version for quick access to your balances and more, available at m.money.strands.com

Signing up is easy

1. You can sign up for moneyStrands with any valid email address here.
2. Add your financial accounts with daily automatic feeds and you’re in business.

Bring in your Mint archive, too

Adding your financial accounts gets you going quickly, but if you would also like to transfer your transaction history data from Mint follow these steps:

1. Export your data from Mint.com by logging into your account and visiting the “Transactions” tab. Scroll to the bottom of the list and you will see the “Export all transactions” link in the bottom right hand corner. Click on this link and hit “Save”.
2. Login to your moneyStrands account or click here to create one.
3. Visit the “Accounts” tab and click on the “Add account” button. Look to the bottom of the pop up box and click on the link that says, “Try our manual file uploader.”
4. After you click on this link an account box will appear. Here is where you can name your account, identify the type of account, the initial balance and the currency.
5. Once you click OK, you’ll be taken back to the Account overview tab of your moneyStrands profile. Here you should see the manual account you created. In the lower right hand corner of this box you’ll see the “Import” button and this is where you can manually import your CSV file.
6. After you click Import, the uploader box will appear. You can browse for your CSV file and easily upload your data in seconds.

For more information, check out our how-to video on creating manual accounts:

Note: Those who plan to auto link accounts in moneyStrands AND import archived data should be aware that there may be some overlap in transactions since your auto linked account will pull part of your transaction history too. This will only occur the first time you import the data and duplicate transactions can easily be deleted from within the “Details” tab.

As always, please let us know how we’re doing and in what other ways moneyStrands can help you improve you financial well being.

Version 2.6 is the first ever full-featured training log for iPhone! It allows runners, cyclists, and active people to add to their training log from categories like exercise, nutrition, injuries, therapy, gear, and more.  And, using the built-in GPS, athletes can use their iPhone 3G or 3GS to map routes and record workouts… but that’s not all!

In the latest version we have added some extra goodies that many people have been asking for…

Route Replay lets users pause their current workout to play a satellite video reply of their progress, or wait until they are finished and view video of their final route.  Along with the video replay, Strands for iPhone will simultaneously display the overall distance and current progress along the route.

iPod and playlist integration so athletes can listen to tunes while working out!  Before or during a workout, tap the playlist button from Strands Chrono to access iPod controls and add tracks to a playlist.  Add tracks by artist, song or album, or add a playlist you’ve created with iTunes on your computer.

Voice Feedback by distance and/or time so that users of the app can hear how fast and how far they have gone without even looking at the iPhone.

Automatic calorie calculation for both calories burned during each workout, and for calories consumed when adding nutritional information to the training log.

Sharing to Facebook & Twitter allows users to optionally share to Facebook and Twitter for their friends on those networks to see.

In the latest version we also introduces 2 modes: Strands Chrono, and Strands Social.  Within Strands Chrono an athlete can add to their training log, view their workout history, and find short-term weather forecasts for their area.  Strands Social allows users of the app to follow how their friends are training, leave comments, and interact with people and groups among other community-based features.

If you haven’t already, download Strands for iPhone from the App Store today and tell us what you think.  We’re always listening and would love to hear about your favorite features and suggestions!

Today we are excited to announce our partnership with La Vuelta a España, the Tour of Spain, to provide the most innovative coverage ever seen by the cycling event.  Along with the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, La Vuelta is one of the three prestigious Grand Tours of Europe.  Stretching 2,046 miles, the 21 day stage race will conclude in the capital city of Madrid on September 20th.

At Strands.com/LaVuelta, users can follow each stage’s GPS route LIVE, receive minute-by-minute situation updates, and listen to an exclusive broadcast of Radio Vuelta, the internal radio of the competition.  Additionally, all cyclists competing in the tour have personal profiles on Strands, where fans can chat and comment on each stage’s performance.

Through our partnership with La Vuelta, we will also be hosting several contests on Strands.com.  A total of 21 Golden Jerseys signed by the final winner of La Vuelta, and one official bicycle of Team Euskaltel will be given away!

For full contest details and information about the event visit Strands.com/LaVuelta.