Jeeves asks resellers to join sales search

Online navigation portal Ask Jeeves is to offer its internet search technology, Ask Jeeves for Business, to resellers and integrators of ecommerce solutions, as part of its launch into the business-to-business sector.

Online navigation portal Ask Jeeves is to offer its internet search technology, Ask Jeeves for Business, to resellers and integrators of ecommerce solutions, as part of its launch into the business-to-business sector.

The portal is to offer the three components of its search engine, Relevant Answers, Advisor and Ask Jeeves Live, to channel partners who could integrate them into websites for clients.

Will Edward, vice-president of corporate services for Ask Jeeves for Business, said e-tailers are recording disappointing sales because their web stores are too impersonal.

Research by analyst Forrester in December 1999 showed that only two per cent of visits to web stores resulted in sales. He claimed conversion rates for customers using Ask Jeeves were up to 15 times higher. "We have the technology to help clients personalise their content and we can help them close sales," said Edward.

The company has poached Sheila Featherstone from Infogain, a reseller that implements Broadvision's content management technology, with the brief to set up a UK channel for the technology. Her target is to attract resellers with vertical and horizontal market knowledge to build a channel worth up to £100m in the UK and the Irish Republic.

However, critics have pointed out that Ask Jeeves for Business has already established an enterprise sales team in the UK. Customers, such as the sporting clothes giant Nike, have already incorporated the technology into their web store fronts, through a direct relationship with the portal.

"The strategy in the UK is based around a UK sales team, but resellers will be able to sell components of our technology," Edward said. "We need partners who know the vertical and horizontal markets, telecoms companies, computer-telephony integration and customer relationship management specialists, that sort of thing."

Ask Jeeves for Business will spend £1m a year promoting the channel, and the portal has promised an aggressive expansion plan. Edward warned companies to "lock up your best sales people".

He said: "We have four channel sales people now, but by the end of the year we are planning to have up to 24 on the sales team."