E-Commerce Site Search – Best Practices to Increase Conversion (Part – 1)

Apr 25 / 2023

No one likes to search for a product among the thousands of products available on an e-commerce site. E-commerce site search saves valuable time for customers. This one reason is enough to prove how a well-developed e-commerce site search can improve conversion rates for your site. We are an e-commerce web development company and we are here to convince you why you need to step up your e-commerce site search game.

What Is an E-Commerce Site Search?

Site search is a feature in e-commerce sites that helps site visitors find the products they need to convert. The visitor just needs to enter the keyword related to the product and the site search will list the relevant products.

While findability is a major aspect of site search for customers, as a seller you can achieve more than just that with this feature. Site search helps understand the mind of the customer and what he needs. With that information, it is possible to suggest related products which he wouldn’t have been interested in otherwise. In simple words, upselling and cross-selling become easier with the site search.

Best E-Commerce Site Search Practices (That Can Convert)

Often, e-commerce site owners tend to shelve features like site search as less important when compared with basic ones like landing pages and more. But this decision might be costing you many customers. Here are some e-commerce site search practices that will help your conversion rates.

• Make the Search Box Findable

One mistake that many e-commerce site owners tend to do is to choose a cluttered homepage. We understand that you have a lot to show your customers but a crowded homepage will only drive customers away.

The search box is the prominent feature that needs to be highlighted on your homepage. The box should be placed in clear sight of the customers. We would recommend you choose the top corners of the homepage.

You can also offset it in a different color than the homepage to draw attention to it. Include placeholder texts like “enter keyword” or “enter product” to make the visitors clearly understand its purpose.

• Aim to Produce Relevant Results

Your job as the site owner does not end after enabling the search option. The purpose of the feature is only fulfilled when the users find relevant results for their queries.

The less you make the user scroll, the better. For getting accurate site search results, you will have to tag your products accurately and do this process consistently.

Conduct keyword research and choose relevant product titles and meta descriptions for the products. Include all possible information like the brand name, model name, and more for better results.

Make sure that your bestsellers top the list of search results since most users prefer to choose the best-ranked products.

Also Read: Difference between Organic and Paid Search Results

• Include Filter Feature on the Results Page

Often, users tend to search for products using broad keywords and the results page would be long. Hence, include the filter feature to help the users find what they are exactly looking for.

Along with the basic choices like filtering the results page in terms of color, brand and price it would help to include more specific filters like clearance sale items, type of product and more.

• Include Auto-Complete and Error Correction

The users often do not have the exact details and images of the product they need to buy. In these cases, they just wing it and auto-complete comes in handy during these times.

Auto-complete will also save the users’ time and will help them choose the best and most relevant query. With this feature, you can also subtly suggest relevant products that you have in stock even though you don’t have the exact product that the user is looking for.

Error correction and handling phonetic spellings will improve user experience. Not every user knows the exact spelling of “L’Oréal Paris” and you cannot expect them to Google search the spelling before they visit your site.

Also Read: How to Get the Results You Want through Your Digital Marketing Plan?

• Use Mobile-First Technique

We already know that smartphones are the main source of retail purchases. So, it does not make sense to design your site just for PCs. Make your site search adaptable to smartphones.

Design the search box to be bigger and easier to tap on for mobile phones. Ensure that the auto-complete feature works on the phones and even when the suggestions are relevant make sure that they do not take up the entire page.

After enabling the site search feature, check whether it operates properly on all types of smartphones and tablets.

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