December 13, 2012

Optimise Site Search for More Conversions and Happy Customers

Vishal Srivastava, Team Lead – European Sales at SLI Systems Ltd, explains how to ensure your site is accessible for users on the move

The usability of your ecommerce website’s search has a direct impact on business success. And as more of your customers use mobile phones and tablets to browse for information and shop for products, the same can be said of the mobile version of your site.

However, creating a fulfilling search experience for both desktop and mobile visitors requires ongoing attention – but happily, search data is a big help in this area. By viewing site search data,you can learn about your customers’ favourite products as well as the terms they use in your search box, and how they respond to promotional offers. You can outsource management of site search to a specialist or full-service provider, who will work closely with you to maximize performance and recommend improvements over time.

Below are ideas for optimising and maintaining your site search to keep customers happy and online orders coming in at a brisk pace.

Monitor the language of your customers

As seasons change and popular products come and go, your customers’ must-have items – and how they describe them – will constantly change. Search reports can help you stay abreast of the terms your visitors use, so you can add new ones to your product descriptions or ensure your site search index takes them into account.

Optimise site search for multiple devices

Larger screens and faster connections are making mobile devices suitable for shopping, no longer just doing research. Some shoppers are even looking at mobile sites while they’re in stores, looking up price comparisons, product reviews and special promotions.

The challenge is to make sure your site accommodates all the different devices and platforms. From iPhones and Androids to iPads and Kindle Fires, every device has different requirements for usability and navigation, and their features are constantly changing and being updated, so your site needs to stay up to date.

Conduct A/B tests

Ongoing testing is a smart way to understand how well site search is performing, and how certain features are used (or not) by site visitors. A/B testing ensures you don’t incorporate search enhancements that don’t lead to conversions.You can test many options, including design changes to search algorithms, page formats (such as grid view versus list view), and refinement options. Once you gauge the impact of different options on your conversion rate you can decide what to implement and what to skip.

Merchandising

Merchandising search pages provides the chance to showcase special offers or products. Just be sure that if you manually tune search results to promote specific products, or if you create keyword-specific banners, that you’re mapping the right terms to the right products (for example, ‘notebook’ could be a computer or a pad of paper). Monitoring the performance of your search on a regular basis will tell you if your products match the right search terms and vice versa, as well as if you need to index synonyms for commonly searched-for products.

The same goes for the development of SEO-related landing pages and banners. If you create landing pages and banners that are designed for visitors who come to your site from Google or Bing, you want to make sure the products and information promoted in the banners are relevant to their search – otherwise they’ll likely abandon your site.

Managing site search is a complex task – but when done right, and on a regular basis, the rewards can be worth the time invested.