Have you ever wondered why onsite search is an important feature (or must-have) for your online store? An effective search feature offers a lot of potential benefits that can make your store online user-friendly.
As a store admin, you should always see the search feature on your site as a valuable communication system that provides answers (search results) to your customers on the spot depending on what product / item they are looking for. A lot of times, retailers pay more attention to search engine optimization (SEO) and forget about onsite search on their online stores. It is certainly a good idea to pay attention to SEO because that’s how the potential shoppers find your website on search engines. But, when customers are able to find your store site quickly via search engines and land on your site, they will expect a similar experience on your e-Commerce site. So it is quite important to make sure that your customers are not getting disappointed using the onsite search feature.
Here are a few tips for a better onsite search feature for your e-Commerce website:
Better search feature makes a better first impression
When customers land on your e-Commerce site, they already know what they are looking for, so they are more likely to go straight to the onsite search. The search feature will be the first point of contact with the store site, so retailers must ensure that they get it right first time to avoid customers from becoming exasperated with inaccurate results.
Why retailers need better onsite search functionality?
- Increase in sales: Better search means, customers are able to find products / items / services quickly. This can certainly increase the rate of orders as if customers are able to find what they are looking for; they are more likely to make the purchase.
- More time spent on the site: Visitors / potential shoppers who use your onsite search feature are more likely to spend more time on your e-Commerce website. This can also lead to more registrations and returning customers.
- Better user-experience: A good onsite search feature improves the shopper’s experience and makes the store site more user-friendly.
A few good practices for onsite search that retailers can adopt for their e-Commerce site
- Auto-complete search: This idea for search originally came from Google site, when a user is searching for anything; the drop down box will immediately display the suggested results so that user does not have to type the complete search term. Today, many e-Commerce sites are using auto-complete search that display the recommended product / item right on the search drop down box so that customers can select the product and go directly to the product page by skipping the search results page. It saves time and speed up the purchase process.
- Using images with product names in search results: There is a famous saying “a picture is worth thousand words”. This also implies on the search results. Displaying images with product names in the search results makes it easier for the potential buyers to select the correct product / item as it enhances the shopper’s experience.
- Placement of onsite search: The placement of onsite search option is quite important as majority of e-Commerce sites uses the website header for displaying the search box. This makes the onsite search option visible on all the pages of the website and hence easily accessible. It is important to keep one thing in mind, if you do not show your customers any option of your store site (or makes it difficult to find), they are not going to use it. So, make the onsite search clearly visible on your store site.
Interesting statistics
- Over 90% of people that perform a search DO NOT go past the first page
- About 87% of search queries are unique
For more information, see this: http://www.webtrafficpartners.com/on-site-and-off-site-search-engine-marketing-optimazation.html
- Autocomplete suggestions are found on 82% of e-commerce websites
- 70% require users to search by the exact jargon for the product type that the website uses
- Searches with symbols and abbreviations are not supported by 60% of e-commerce websites
Baymard Institute have invested months conducting a large-scale usability study, testing the e-commerce search experience of 19 major e-commerce websites with real-world end users, see this for more information: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/18/the-current-state-of-e-commerce-search/
nopCommerce offers a user-friendly onsite search feature that allows your customers to easily find what they are looking for. nopCommerce also support search features like auto-complete, displaying product images in search results and advances search that allows customers to filter the results.
Author: Lavish Kumar
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