Are you wondering why your site visitors leave without buying products from your online store? Or, at least add a product into their cart?
If so, then this article is for you. These 5 Best Practices for Site Search will help your site’s traffic and sales performance in no time!
What is a Site Search Feature?
Your web store affects your conversion rate and your sales growth. Why? For site visitors and shoppers, it is a big no-no if searching for the products they need or want to buy is taking their time. This is the reason why your store must have a site search feature.
A Site Search feature helps visitors quickly find the content they are looking for on your website. This functionality allows your visitors to save time and get the most relevant result while giving your site a significant probability of converting those site visitors into sales.
But what makes a good site search feature?
5 Best Practices for Site Search
It is given that the site search features must generate quick and relevant search results. However, the site search feature must also allow the customer to refine their searches and get recommendations for similar products that they are looking for.
In general, site search features must be tailored to your website and your customer’s needs. An effective and efficient site search not only helps, guides, and recommends the content or the products to the customers but also displays information that the customer needs on time.
But what if I will tell you that there are other things that your site search functionality must have that will help your online store to convert more prospects?
Here are the things that you must consider when getting a site search feature for your website or online store:
Search bar’s visibility.
Customers often navigate from page to page, so it is essential that they can always jump or go back from one page to another. Yes, there is an arrow back button, but it will take a few more clicks before the customers reach the page where their desired content is.
Some might not look at this as an issue. But for the site visitors and customers, this is a hassle that must be addressed. Thus, it is advisable that you must add the search bar to any relevant page.
Also, it would be best if you intentionally put the search bar where the customers will always see it. The search bar should be large enough to grab the customer’s attention and long enough to take a more extended search string.
Great navigation features.
Most websites have diverse visitors. They may come from different regions with different backgrounds. Unfortunately, not all of these visitors are tech-savvy and will indeed have trouble searching for the product they want. Because of this, it is best if your site search functionality has these sub-features:
Autocomplete – predicts the product name or content the customer is interested in.
Autocorrect – addresses the customer’s typographical error to ensure that they will find what they are searching for.
Filter – helps the customers narrow their searches and gives them the exact content they want.
All the sub-features above have one goal – to help the customer quickly find the product of their choice.
Optimize for all devices.
Today, most content searches come from mobile phones and tablets, not desktop computers. Thus, your site search feature must be mobile-optimized, or it must be optimized for all devices. It must be up-to-date and must be technologically advanced.
Also, with the rise of Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant, you must anticipate that most of your online store customers prefer to look for their content using the voice search feature.
Add Value to the Results Page.
A site search must not only display the results intended for the customers. It must also display content that inspires and encourages them to check other items or products.
You can integrate and utilize promoted banners and merchandising features into your site search functionality. Be mindful of your website’s pages, too. Make sure that you do not have a no-result page.
As much as possible, establish a comprehensive synonym library that matches your website visitors’ profiles and content. Doing this leads the visitors to the potential products they are searching for, or to least to its alternatives which they may be interested in buying.
It would help if you also worked on your search results layout. Depending on the content, you may set the site result page with a grid layout for images and a list layout for text results. This will make the results easier to read.
Work on Your Site Search Data
Site search data are as important as the site search function. If the latter works more on giving the customers a valuable and one-of-a-kind user experience, the former help you and your website evaluate your online store’s overall performance.
It determines your site’s conversion and sales growth, where the site search result plays a significant role. The search data also gives you insights as to what relevant keywords are primarily used for a specific period.
Moreover, it also helps you identify and categorize which products you need to replenish, keep, and sell.
Conclusion
If your site search functionality has all the features mentioned above, you will have happy, satisfied, and engaged customers who are much more willing to buy your products.
For first-hand experience on how site search functionality affects your website, you may check Expertrec’s search site feature, which covers all five best practices for site search.
Expertrec ensures that your site search is 100% optimized to boost your content or your products and, at the same time, hook the site visitors to stay longer on your website and lead them to buy your product.
Expertrec, the symbol of the eCommerce revolution, will surely help your site get more traffic and conversions. This is made possible by their mission which is “to focus on the delivering customer-centric solutions to our eCommerce platforms.”
Are you ready to increase your revenues? Check Expertrec now!
