What Is Site Search?
Having an advanced site search is crucial for user satisfaction, boosting sales and onsite usability. Discover how AI has revolutionized advanced search capacity through vector search, multimodal search and natural language processing.
The Ultimate Guide to Internal Search
eCommerce vs Content Search
Optimized eCommerce Site Search Strategies
Improve Internal Site Search
eCommerce Search Technology
Mastering eCommerce Site Search From Best Practices to Advanced Features
Site search is an essential component of any eCommerce website, providing customers with a powerful tool to quickly and efficiently find the products they're looking for. A well-optimized site search can significantly boost conversions and improve overall customer experience.
By implementing an advanced search solution, businesses can deliver more relevant, precise results tailored to user intent. This not only enhances user satisfaction but also keeps customers engaged, encouraging longer site visits and repeat purchases, ultimately supporting long-term business growth.
» Learn more about the power of AI in eCommerce site search
4 Benefits of Site Search in eCommerce
1. Increase Conversions & Revenue
Customers who conduct site searches aren't “just browsing”; they know what they want. This means they’re optimizing site search can increase conversions—in fact, customers who make use of site search are 43% more likely to convert than those who don't.
Reasons include:
- It provides a direct path to products: Site search allows customers to quickly find exactly what they're looking for, rather than tediously navigating through different categories. This reduces friction in the buying process.
- It increases the average order value: By providing relevant results and personalized suggestions, site search can encourage customers to explore more products and add more items to their cart.
- It captures buying intent: Customers who use site search often have a strong purchase intent. By providing a seamless search experience, you can capitalize on this intent and turn them into paying customers.
» Make sure you avoid these eCommerce search mistakes
2. Improve Customer Experience & Reduce Bounce Rates
Most eCommerce merchants aren't fully aware of how important great site search functionality is for their store. Poor site search can chase potential customers away—up to 62% of consumers will even switch to a different brand if they aren't happy with the search experience.
On the other hand, a positive site search experience with streamlined navigation can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here's why:
- Faster & easier navigation: Site search eliminates the need to browse through multiple pages, making it more efficient and simpler for customers to find what they need.
- Personalized experience: Advanced site search solutions can personalize results based on user behavior, preferences, and past purchases. As many as 81% of customers prefer companies with personalized experiences.
- Reduced bounce rate: When customers can't find what they're looking for, they're likely to leave your site. Site search helps prevent this by providing quick and accurate results.
» Learn more about improving the customer experience with AI
3. Gain Valuable Data & Insights
If you aren't using analytics platforms like Google Analytics to track your site's performance, then you're behind the competition. In fact, Google Analytics is already being used by around 47.9% of all websites.
Analyzing site search data can provide valuable insights into customer behavior, helping you in the following ways:
- Understanding customer needs: Site search analytics provide valuable insights into what customers are searching for, what products are popular, and what terms they use. For example, if you own an electronics store with inconsistent sales, reviewing site search data can help you understand what specific products are more popular than others and the kind of terminology you should include in the descriptions.
- Identifying trends: By analyzing search data, you can identify emerging trends and adjust your product offerings or marketing strategies accordingly.
- Optimizing product placement: You can use search data to understand which products are frequently searched for but not easily found. If customers are misspelling a certain product or failing to find what they're looking for, it might help to display those items more prominently.
» Not convinced? See these crucial site search statistics
4. Streamline Customer Segmentation
Segmenting your audience is an essential strategy in eCommerce that helps you tailor the shopping experience to each customer in a way that maximizes their potential profit. Although the exact customer segments for each store will vary slightly, consider these as a great starting point:
- First-time visitors: First impressions matter—a well-placed search bar acts as a guide for newbies, helping them quickly understand what your site offers while preventing frustration and encouraging them to stick around. They might not know your product categories yet, so search lets them explore freely.
- Returning customers: Returning customers often know what they want. Site search lets them bypass browsing and go straight to the product, saving time and effort. If your search is smart, it can recognize returning users and prioritize results based on past purchases or browsing history, making the experience even more efficient
- High-value customers: For VIPs, site search can be a gateway to exclusive products or promotions that make them feel valued and reinforces their relationship with your brand. High-value customers often have specific preferences, and your site search can be used to showcase items that align with their past behavior, increasing the chances of a high-value purchase.
» Make sure you understand the differences between customer personalization and segmentation
Pro tip: These suggestions are a great starting point, but you'll have to tweak and tailor your customer segments to match your audience. For example, customers with specific needs (such as disabilities or age-related requirements) might require their own segments and targeting strategies.
» Check out these strategies to optimize your B2C eCommerce site search
Core Site Search Best Practices
1. Simplify Your Store's Navigation With Relevance Over Randomness
Put simply, this means ensuring that search results are highly relevant to the customer's query using effective indexing and search algorithms. If no relevant results are found, the site search engine should be manually set to display recommended products that are as closely related as possible to the original internal search.
The two main types of multimodal search relevance in eCommerce site search are keyword matching and semantic search:
Keyword Matching
This is the most fundamental type of relevance in an eCommerce product search algorithm. The internal search engine looks for exact or close matches between the user's search query and the keywords in product titles, descriptions, or metadata.
Example: Superbalist
When users search for a "red dress" on Superbalist's website, the search tool pulls up all the products that match the description, with the product names containing the words "red" and "dress" being prioritized.
Semantic Search
Semantic search goes beyond simple keyword matching and aims to understand the meaning and intent behind the user's query. It considers synonyms, related concepts, and the context of the search to provide more relevant results, even if the user's phrasing isn't perfect.
Example: Superbalist
Searching for "formal attire for women" on Superbalist's website yields a variety of results. Though almost none of the listed products include any of the words from the search query in their product names, the search engine's semantic capabilities still understand the intent of the query and can return relevant results.
» Learn more in our guide to semantic search
Extra Types of Relevance to Consider
- Personalized relevance: This takes into account the user's past behavior, purchase history, and preferences to personalize search results. If a user frequently buys a particular brand, those products might be prioritized in their search results.
- Popularity and trending items: The search engine can boost the ranking of popular products or items that are currently trending. This can help users discover new products and also helps the business promote certain items.
- Location-based relevance: For businesses with physical stores, location can be a factor. The search might prioritize products available in the user's local store or nearby warehouses.
- Search rules and merchandising: Businesses can define rules to boost or bury certain products in search results based on marketing goals or inventory levels. For example, they might boost clearance items or promote new arrivals.
2. Break Language Barriers With Typo Tolerance & Synonyms
Pure keyword matching has limitations in being too literal. If a search query contains synonyms, misspellings, or different phrasing, the search engine struggles to understand the intent behind the search and might return the wrong results.
By offering tolerance for minor mistakes, synonyms, and alternate spellings when indexing products can improve search accuracy and reduce the frustration that comes with zero results from small errors. This not only keeps users on your site but also increases the chances of conversion as they can still locate their desired products.
Example: Amazon
Misspelling the popular shoe brand as "Adias" on Amazon still manages to yield successful results. In addition to displaying products by Adidas, the website even asks the customer if they made a spelling mistake.
Popular Typo Tolerance Techniques in Site Search
1. Levenshtein Distance
- What it is: This is a classic algorithm that measures the "distance" between two words, calculated by counting the minimum number of single-character edits (insertions, deletions, or substitutions) required to change one word into the other.
- Example: The Levenshtein distance between "adidas" and "adias" is 1 (inserting a 'd' after the 'i')
- How it works in search: Search engines use Levenshtein distance to find words in your product catalog that are "close" to the user's search query, even if there are typos. The technology sets a threshold (e.g., a maximum distance of 2), and words within that distance are considered potential matches.
- Advantages: Widely used and effective, can handle various typos.
- Limitations: Can be computationally expensive for very large catalogs.
2. Soundex
- What it is: Soundex focuses on how words sound rather than how they are spelled. It assigns a code to each word based on its pronunciation, and words with similar pronunciations get the same code.
- Example: "Skirt" and "skert" would likely have the same Soundex code, even though they're spelled differently.
- How it works in search: Search engines can find results even if the user doesn't know how to spell a word, so long as they sound it out correctly.
- Advantages: Useful for handling phonetic misspellings.
- Limitations: Less accurate than Levenshtein distance for many types of typos, might produce false positives (different words with the same pronunciation).
3. Metaphone
- What it is: Metaphone is a phonetic algorithm like Soundex, but is more sophisticated and produces more accurate results.
- Example: Metaphone can often distinguish between words that Soundex would group together.
- How it works in search: Similar to Soundex, but with better accuracy.
- Advantages: More accurate than Soundex.
- Limitations: Still primarily focused on pronunciation, so it might not catch all types of typos.
Pro tip: Implementing synonym management doesn't have to be complex. Download your store's catalog into a spreadsheet and create a list of synonyms for each product using a thesaurus or your imagination.
3. Offer Precision With Faceting & Filtering
Faceting with product filters and categories narrows down product selections, helping users quickly refine their choices. This customization enhances the shopping experience by allowing users to sort and filter results according to their preferences, improving user satisfaction and engagement.
Product attributes are specific characteristics of a product, such as color, size, brand, price, material, etc. that are used for filtering and faceting in site search. The more options you can add for faceting, the more customized of a search experience users will have, and the greater satisfaction they'll experience.
» Need more help? Here's how to optimize filters in eCommerce
Example: Amazon
Amazon offers almost unparalleled levels of faceting and filtering for most of their product categories. For example, searching for "monitor" gives you dozens of ways to narrow the search down, from pricing and reviews to tech specifics like response times and refresh rate.
» Confused? Make sure you understand the difference between categories & collections
4. Anticipate User Needs With AI-Powered Autocomplete
Implement autocomplete functionality to provide suggestions as users type, reducing the number of clicks required to find products. This feature speeds up the search process by predicting human search queries, improving overall efficiency. Additionally, it reduces the likelihood of errors in search queries, making the search experience smoother and more intuitive.
Optimizing autocomplete search can take it a step further by suggesting:
- Products and images
- Category suggestions
- Partial matches
Example: Nike
Nike exemplifies AI-powered autocomplete functionality by offering numerous suggestions as users type, from products and categories to high-quality images.
5. Welcome Your Customers With Unmissable Search Bars
Your search function should be clearly visible and easily identifiable so that customers don't have to work to find it. Ideally, it should be placed at the top of the screen (both on desktop and mobile) and you should consider using a noticeable icon like a magnifying glass.
Example: Amazon
It's almost impossible to miss Amazon's sticky search bar that remains at the top of the screen on desktop and mobile regardless of where you are on the site.
» Learn more in our guide to the Shopify search bar
6. Build Your Community By Optimizing for Mobile
Did you know that around 63% of total retail eCommerce is performed on mobile or through social media? Mobile optimization is now a necessity for eCommerce merchants—failing to do so is sure to result in lost sales.
Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking. This means if your site search isn't optimized for mobile, it can negatively impact your search engine rankings, even if your desktop version is great.
Ensure that your website has the following mobile-friendly eCommerce features:
- Seamless experience: Ensure your site search adapts to any screen size, whether it's a phone, tablet, or desktop, to provide a consistent and user-friendly experience across all devices.
- Large, clear search bar: On mobile, users rely on touch input. Make sure your search bar is large enough and easy to tap, even with a thumb.
- Voice search: Consider incorporating voice search functionality. This allows users to search hands-free, which can be especially useful on mobile.
- Thumb-friendly navigation: Ensure that your search results page and any filtering options are easy to navigate with a thumb. Avoid small buttons or links that are difficult to tap accurately.
Example: Sephora
Sephora is a great example of a mobile-first website. The experience doesn't change from desktop to mobile, featuring a prominent sticky search bar that offers autocomplete and product recommendations throughout the search process.
7. Facilitate Rapid Searching With Fast Website Speed
Customers today expect to find anything they need with a quick internet search, and if they can't do the same on your online store, they'll move on. That’s why having a site search function that easily matches what customers are searching for is crucial for any eCommerce business.
The technical elements of website search speed you should know include:
Indexing
Indexing is the process of creating a searchable representation of your website's content. Think of it like the index at the back of a book. The search engine crawls your site, extracts information (product details, text, etc.), and organizes it into a structure that allows for fast lookups.
A well-optimized index is essential for fast search. Without it, the search engine would have to scan your entire website every time a user performs a search, which would be incredibly slow.
The factors that affect indexing speed include:
- Website size
- Complexity of product catalog
- Efficiency of your indexing process
» Learn more about indexing in our guide to federated search vs. unified search
Caching
Caching involves storing frequently accessed search results in memory (or a fast storage system). When a user performs a search that has been cached, the results can be retrieved instantly without having to query the index again. Caching dramatically improves search speed, especially for popular queries.
Key caching terms to know include:
- Query caching: Stores the results for specific search queries.
- Page caching: Caches entire search results pages.
- Cache invalidation: Caching strategies need to have a way to invalidate or update the cache when products change, new content is added, or prices are updated.
Server Response Time
This is the time it takes for your server to process the search request and return the results. It depends on the performance of your server hardware, the efficiency of your search algorithms, and the load on your server.
Although most eCommerce store owners can't optimize their server response times too much, some things that might help tech-savvy merchants include:
- Updating hardware: Use powerful servers with sufficient RAM and processing power.
- Optimizing software: Optimize your search engine software and database queries to keep up with evolving technology and trends.
- Load balancing: Distribute traffic across multiple servers to prevent overload.
Network Latency
This is the time it takes for the data to travel from your server to the user's browser. It's influenced by the user's internet connection, network congestion, and the distance between the user and your server.
Pro tip: The best way to improve network latency is to utilize a content delivery network (CDN) to store copies of your website's content on servers located closer to users around the world.
» Here's how to improve product page loading speed
Advanced Site Search Features
Implementing advanced search features can significantly enhance the user experience on your eCommerce site. By utilizing tools like natural language processing, visual search, and voice search, you can cater to diverse user preferences and ensure that customers find products more easily:
» Learn more: Best practices for eCommerce site search
Natural Language Processing
Natural language searches are context-based rather than keyword-based so that customers can enter descriptions, questions, and even abbreviations, and still find what they are looking for.
Great NLP should be able to:
- Handle pronouns: NLP can resolve pronouns like "it" or "they" in follow-up queries. A user might search for "blue shirt" and then say "show me it in green." NLP understands that "it" refers to the blue shirt
- Understand intent: NLP can infer the user's intent even if the query is ambiguous. For example, "cheap laptop" could mean the user is looking for a budget-friendly laptop or a laptop on sale. The search engine might present a range of options or ask clarifying questions.
- Identify the context: NLP can use the user's past search history and browsing behavior to provide more relevant results.
NLP should be able to break down complex or conversational queries into their constituent parts.
Visual Search
Visual search allow users to search by uploading an image of a product instead of typing anything. Many site search products don’t even require any coding knowledge to enable visual discovery.
The types of visual search include:
| Visual Search Type | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Image Search | Most common type. Users upload an image and the search engine returns visually similar images or related content. It's about finding more of what you see. | A user uploads a picture of a red dress, and the search engine returns all products that match the design. |
| Reverse Image Search | Similar to image search, but the focus is on finding the source of an image or other information related to it. It's about finding where you've seen something. | A user finds a dress online but doesn't know where it came from. They perform a reverse image search to find the original vendor. |
| Style Search | This focuses on the style of an image. Users can upload an image and find visually similar items that share the same aesthetic. This is particularly useful in fashion merchandising and home décor. | A user uploads a picture of a living room with a mid-century modern design. The style search engine returns furniture, lighting, and decor items that fit that specific style. |
| Object Recognition Search | This type of visual search identifies specific objects within an image. It's about finding what is in the picture. | A user uploads a picture of a cluttered desk. The object recognition search engine identifies the laptop, the coffee mug, and the pen, allowing the user to search for replacements or similar items. |
» Learn more about AI-powered visual search
Voice Search
Voice search allows customers to search for products by speaking into a microphone (usually on their phones) instead of having to type anything. It is especially useful for mobile users with accessibility issues, providing a hands-free way to search and enhancing the accessibility of your site.
The challenges with voice search include:
- Accuracy and understanding: Voice recognition technology is constantly improving, but it can still struggle with accents, background noise, and complex or unusual phrasing.
- Privacy concerns: Users may be hesitant to share personal information or make purchases using voice commands due to privacy concerns.
- Context and intent: Understanding the user's true intent can be difficult with voice search. A spoken query might be more ambiguous than a typed one.
- Handling complex queries: Voice search often involves longer, more conversational queries. eCommerce platforms need to be able to understand and process these complex requests accurately through natural language processing.
- Limited visual feedback: Unlike traditional search, voice search often provides limited visual feedback, making it harder for users to browse and compare products.
The opportunities with voice search include:
- Convenience and speed: Voice search offers a hands-free and convenient way to shop online, especially for mobile users and those multitasking.
- Personalization: Voice search can integrate with personalization technology to take into account the user's past purchases, preferences, and even their tone of voice.
- Accessibility: Voice search can make online shopping more accessible to people with disabilities or those who find typing difficult.
- Local search optimization: Voice search is often used for local searches, making it crucial for businesses to optimize their online presence for local voice queries.
» Stay on top of evolving trends by learning about how voice search is changing SEO
Advanced Tailored Search & Discovery
Fast Simon's AI-powered eCommerce search solution can help take your on-site search engine to the next level.
Intelligent natural language processing
Built-in voice and visual search capabilities
Patented AI autocomplete
Leveraging Site Search Analytics
Use predictive analytics tools to track site search usage and identify opportunities for improvement. These insights reveal popular search terms and patterns, helping you optimize your product offerings. By analyzing user behavior and understanding internal search metrics, businesses can better understand customer preferences and adjust search functionality to meet evolving needs.
Key eCommerce Search Metrics to Track and Why
- Searches per visit: How many searches do users perform in a single session? A high number might indicate they're having trouble finding what they need.
- Percentage of visitors using search: What proportion of your visitors use the search bar? A low number could mean it's not prominent enough or that users prefer other navigation methods.
- Search exit rate: What percentage of users leave your site immediately after performing a search? A high rate suggests poor results or a frustrating experience that should be optimized.
- Average session duration for search users: Do users who search stay longer on your site? This can indicate if search helps them find valuable content or pushes them away.
- Null result rate: What percentage of searches return no results? This highlights gaps in your product catalog or indexing issues that need to be fixed.
- Click-through rate (CTR) on search results: How often do users click on the top search results? A low CTR suggests the results aren't relevant to their queries.
- Top search terms: What are the most common search queries? This reveals what products or information users are most interested in and might give you insights for expanding your product catalog.
- "No hits" keywords: What terms are users searching for that return no results? This identifies potential product gaps or areas where content needs improvement. It could also suggest that your typo tolerance and synonym listings need to be improved.
» Need help understanding site search analysis and picking tools? See our guide to navigating internal site search analysis
Elevate Your eCommerce Store With Smarter Site Search
Investing in site search optimization is no longer optional—it’s a necessity for eCommerce success. A well-tuned search engine can increase conversions, enhance the user experience, and provide valuable insights into customer behavior. By implementing advanced features like NLP, visual search, and voice search, your eCommerce site can remain competitive and cater to evolving customer expectations.
Regularly monitoring and adjusting your site search based on analytics will ensure that it continues to meet your business goals. Ultimately, an optimized site search empowers your customers to find what they need quickly, resulting in higher sales and greater satisfaction.
» Ready to improve your site search? Book a demo with us and learn about our eCommerce solutions
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