Why is ecommerce site search important? It has oft been said that users who engage with an ecommerce search box convert 3 or 4 times higher than users who don’t search. This conversion multiple varies depending on the brand, products being sold and complexity of product catalogue. However, as a maxim it holds true on every retail ecommerce website we’ve worked on; site search is critical to success (caveat time: simple sites with limited products and content often don’t need search as the user journeys are far simpler to handle through effective navigation).
So why do many ecommerce sites still have a flawed search experience? For example, many sites don’t handle product attribute searches effectively and provide confused results that increase user effort. One example is a department store where the search for “dual camera phone” showed dual cookers and cameras above smartphones. The technology is there to avoid this but it comes down to your implementation effort; search tools need to be taught and that takes time and effort.
In our 50th episode, Paul and James discuss the importance of on-site search in ecommerce. We explore how search should be managed internally, the benefits of using a third-party solution, the different native platform capabilities and core feature requirements you need to think about.
You can also listen to this ecommerce site search episode via the following:
Key discussion points
- Why should ecommerce teams take on site search as seriously as off site search?
- Is search the #1 revenue driver now for all ecommerce stores, or does usage vary?
- How good are the main platforms’ out of the box search solutions?
- What happens when you just take search OOTB without any tuning?
- What are the important use cases to think about to ensure search delivers a good UX?
- Which search tools do we rate and why?
- What makes a good ecommerce site search integration?
