Ecommerce site search technology has been utilized by the most successful global ecommerce companies like Amazon, eBay, buy.com and Staples for over a decade. They realize the importance of site search and its ability to engage tens of millions of users. Site search is the preferred tool used by visitors to find products & their information, subscriptions, FAQ, content, customer support and store locations, if any. Top rated ecommerce websites continuously innovate their search technology to improve their website user interface & user experience (UI/UX) and promote their products relevance at the same time. It does not matter how big or small your company is, the 7 tips below will make improvements in your site search technology. Site search can be significantly enhanced in any ecommerce platform like Magento, Shopify, Volusion, Drupal, Joomla or even WordPress ecommerce to engage more visitors and boost your conversion rates.
Make Site Search Prominent:
Online buyers are less inclined to look through all the options available instead they prefer to search for a specific product they want to buy. Using a prominent search box on your site is very important. You want your visitors to browse through your services but at the same time should be easy and time saving for them.
Get a better layout for your website or design your pages in such a way that your search box is prominent. It should be visible easily to all the visitors to your site. The site search box should be right in front of your visitors as soon as they access your site. The most commonly used placements are high above the fold usually in the header.
Get a Fast Search Engine:
The saying “Time is Money” is very apt in this area. If it takes long, people will leave. Take Google as an example were you type in your query and get results in a fraction of a second. Make it your standard and make your search faster. Get a bigger server, memory, or find a cloud-based search that delivers super-fast results using Magento Extension like Apache Java Solr or Elastic search. Use a content delivery network (CDN) using a huge network of servers across the world that caches your pages ensuring that your customers will find anything they search for immediately.
Get Autocomplete for Your Search Box:
Autocomplete predictions are relevant search terms and may not be what you are trying to find. Google first started using autocomplete or Auto Suggestion and users have loved this idea. A drop down box with a few suggestive search queries goes a long way in ensuring that you hold on to your visitor. At Google, it also helps if you are not sure about the spelling of your query. Google suggests you more common spellings than your version. If you have signed in to your Google account, your predictions will be based on your past searches.
Google uses many sensors like your location, search history, semantic analysis, latest trends, and more to have at least, some viable suggestions during your search. In ecommerce, this concept is also applicable in recommending products. If you have services or products to offer, use suggestions for them as well, along with your search queries. You can use an auto-complete product or subscribe to a good search auto-complete service online.
Good Images Must Accompany Your Product Names and Descriptions:
It is well said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, which in advertising is also true. An image and its placement on a page have the power to increase or decrease the likelihood of someone clicking on the ad. Ensure that the results on your Search results page are accompanied by their corresponding images. Make the images clear and appealing and you will have more visitors and better conversion rates.
Know What Your Visitors are Searching for on Your Website:
Keep track of search terms from Google webmasters and analytics to analyze what people are typing on your site. Look at the list of most searched or viewed products to know about what your customers are trying to find. Based on your information, you may direct them to new but related products based on their search that will provide them what they were actually looking for and at the same time, help you optimize your search mechanism. Some hosted Search services offer a search log of your site or a dashboard displaying similar lists.
Promote Your Products by Leveraging Search Suggestions:
Behind the biggest companies like the Amazon, a sophisticated system optimizes their Search results. They also offer product suggestions when a visitor is looking for something on their site. They take into account popular searches and retailing tactics. The system takes the product margin, inventory, promotion and user preference into account while suggesting services and other products to its visitors. The promotion is based on what the user is looking for and a good Search engine allows you at least a fair part of such erudition. A good search engine will also auto-correct typos, ignore items that are Out of stock, and rank the results.
Make your Search engine superior and follow the pointers above to offer a great user experience that will increase your traffic and improve your conversion rates.
Deepak Wadhwani has over 20 years experience in software/wireless technologies. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies including Intuit, ESRI, Qualcomm, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone, Nortel, Microsoft and Oracle in over 60 countries. Deepak has worked on Internet marketing projects in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange Country, Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, New York, San Francisco and Huntsville. Deepak has been a founder of technology Startups for one of the first Cityguides, yellow pages online and web based enterprise solutions. He is an internet marketing and technology expert & co-founder for a San Diego Internet marketing company.
