Since the onset of the pandemic, online sales have skyrocketed in importance. Thanks to all of this online traffic, leveraging your eCommerce search priorities has become an essential part of any feasible marketing strategy. Optimizing your on-site searches can transform how you interact with customers, giving you access to a wealth of data while creating key touchpoints with your clients at the same time. Here are a few reasons why an updated search system is crucial to your company’s success.
Increasing Conversion
Your search engine is one of the first things people interact with when landing on your retail site. They most likely have something in mind already and will be disappointed if they can’t find what they’re looking for. Conversely, if they can browse quickly and easily through your product pages and queried results continually point them in the right direction, the search bar quickly becomes the site’s most valuable asset!
Converting site leads to sales is a crucial part of eCommerce search systems. By providing a seamless road from search results to checkout, your customers will be ready to buy with just a few clicks. In addition, having optimizations that point customers to supplementary products can help to keep them surfing your site. It may also drive impulse purchases with related items popping up as suggestions throughout their virtual trip.
Customer Personalization and Retention
You know your customers are special. Without them, you wouldn’t be in business! The key is to let them know how important they are to your company. That means crafting a personalized experience when they shop at your site. If searching through your online catalog is a pain, they’re going to look elsewhere for their products.
While a bad search engine can ruin your site, a well-optimized one can let it shine. Using eCommerce search best practices, you can use customers’ keywords and inquiries to track their interest in particular items. You can then use that information to recommend additional items for purchase.
Informed Corporate Decisions
The collected information doesn’t just help the customer. When your site logs search queries and selected results, it gives your business crucial insight into how your customers think. Keeping an eye on this information can help illustrate some trends, including:
Failed Searches: Showing searches with no clicks, these results tell you about clients who can’t find what they’re looking for. If it is a common enough occurrence, it may be a good idea to begin stocking those products.
Product Popularity: By looking at eCommerce search data, you can quickly see which items are looked for most frequently and determine if you should keep supplying the item or increase its presence on the site.
Device Usage: Knowing which devices are used to search your site most frequently may lead you to change your site design to better fit a particular format.
Data is a key factor in business, and getting it from your on-site searches will allow you to tailor your brand to customers you know are visiting and buying from your virtual storefront. You can even spot future trends in your industry based on what your customers are looking for.
Brand-Focused Results
An optimized eCommerce search engine needs to work toward building your brand. During searches is the perfect time to use branding to help drive sales. The goal is to create a positive shopping experience while also promoting your products in a way that seems helpful and unobtrusive. Suggestions with similar products will go a long way to show your shoppers you understand the products they’re looking for.
Google’s proprietary search frameworks are an excellent example of using search engine data to create brand-focused results. Recently teaming up with Rite-Aid, Google’s Retail Search solution helps to point customers in the direction of the correct products based on their intended purchase. It also incorporates the store’s current sales as well as any deals or discounts the customer is entitled to.
Enhanced Shopping Experience
The most useful thing a search engine can do is bring your clients to their intended purchase, and the fewer time people spend digging through your page for the right item, the better. Your search engine can be optimized to help customers find exactly what they’re looking for with special features such as autocorrect to manage common spelling errors.
Autocomplete and autosuggest are additional key functions of an eCommerce search engine. Autocomplete will finish your customer’s queries and is especially useful for repeat clients who frequently purchase the same products. Autosuggest is similar, but also includes other possibilities that may spark a customer’s interest to shop further.
The Hunt is On
An on-site search engine can make or break your business. When it’s not optimized, it can turn customers away in frustration or not get the products you want in front of people’s eyes. If you have a great setup, it can increase your customer conversions and give you enough data to take your marketing team to a whole new level. Once you understand how eCommerce searches work, you’ll be able to leverage their use to really pad out that bottom line!
