PENN FOSTER TAPS SEARCHSTAX TO HELP STUDENTS EASILY FIND THE TRAINING PROGRAMS THEY NEED

BOSTON, MA, AND MANHATTAN BEACH, CA, April 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Workforce development pioneer Penn Foster today announced it has selected SearchStax Site Search product to replace the existing search function on Penn Foster’s website. The new technology will provide more relevant search results to students, enable Penn Foster’s marketing team to monitor and manage search without IT intervention, and free IT to focus on other activities. SearchStax will provide Penn Foster the search back-end infrastructure with its Managed Solr solution as well as the search front end with Site Search User Experience Accelerator and Site Search analytics and management console. “Our alternative to SearchStax technology was a large-scale internal development effort. And even with a substantial investment, that development would have given us a fraction of the capabilities we are getting. For instance, we wouldn’t have a user-centric UI that puts marketing in control. We would have no analytics. And marketing would have had to continually rely on development to tweak search,” said Chad Smith, Senior Application Developer. Penn Foster’s marketing team will leverage Site Search analytics and its many search optimization capabilities to make sure students always get the most relevant search results on the first page. Sameer Maggon, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SearchStax reacts: “We’re thrilled we get to work with Penn Foster to help students find the right educational programs. Site Search puts Penn Foster’s marketing team in control and gives them the tools they need to make search relevant without needing any IT intervention. Now, IT can quickly put to bed the search topic and move to other projects.” Smith leads the front-end development on Penn Foster’s web properties on Sitecore and .NET and he adds: “Installing Site Search is simple and fast. Since we are already using SearchStax for Solr hosting; adding Site Search is very simple. And to make things even easier, SearchStax is tightly integrated with Sitecore, our website platform.” Smith also shares some of his thoughts about Penn Foster’s project to improve search: “Before we knew of Site Search, we had to cut tons of search features to achieve our initial launch date. Now they are all back on the table, and more, and we will get them all at launch.” “This will change everything,” concludes Smith.