Common Ecommerce Search Mistakes & How To Avoid Them

Having a strong site search function is a crucial element of your eCommerce store. Especially for high intent users, making sure that they can find the products they are searching for is of utmost importance. Most stores will use a site search, but making sure that it fits the standard of other advanced site search functions being offered is important. This will lower your bounce rate, create a positive user experience, and boost sales. Let’s take a look at some of the site search mistakes to avoid.

Search Bar With Low Visibility

The aesthetic of your website should not override functionality. Instead, there should be a good mix of functionality and presentation. One thing is for sure though: the search bar should always be clearly visible. There should never be a situation where a person cannot find where they want to search. It should not be in a drop-down format, or in a hard to spot place. If this is the case, shoppers will search elsewhere.

Suitable places for search bar are:

• Upper right hand corner
• Upper left hand corner
• Upper center of the screen

Make sure it is clearly labeled, and easy to use.

Search Bar Without Autocomplete

Having an autocomplete feature within your search bar is necessary these days. Having AI powered autocomplete that also offers smart, relevant or personalized recommendations can go even further with this. 

As soon as your shopper starts typing, they should be met with suggestions that help them in their journey. These can be based on their previous activity, their current keyword search, or your business goals.

This smoothens the user experience, causing them to view your business more positively. It also helps you boost your sales, as you ensure that shoppers find the products that are relevant to them.

No Room For Search Mistakes

Shoppers will often search with spelling mistakes, or sometimes not using the specific product name in certain cases. Particularly on eCommerce stores that deal with intricate products such as car parts or types of ink, it’s unreasonable to always expect shoppers to know the exact names for search.

Ensuring that your search does not rely on keyword search alone, but has room for synonym and antonym suggestions is very important. For example, if someone types in ‘bikini’ but products are tagged under ‘bathing suits’, they should still be able to find it.

Similarly, if products are spelled wrong, your shopper should not see ‘0 results’. Instead, your search should interpret what the intention was behind the search, and show results close to the wrong spelling. 



Not Using AI Within Your Search

Continuing from the last error, there are many ways that your search can be optimized by using AI. To not include the capacities that AI can offer within your search means seriously missing out on potential sales.

Vector Search allows search to function based on user intent. Through machine learning it can detect synonyms, intent and meaning of the user’s input query. This does not rely on correct spelling or keyword use. It can even create the potential for multimodal search; search conducted via images or other forms of media.

With the eCommerce world constantly expanding and the competition fierce, using AI in your search strategy is important. It could be this that keeps shoppers returning back.

Not Optimizing For Mobile Commerce

A huge percentage of eCommerce sales are made over mobile devices. This can be up to a whopping 73%. Not optimizing your eCommerce search for mobile is therefore a huge mistake to make, and could cost you a lot of sales.

Platforms such as Tapcart can offer optimized mobile apps made from your online store in order to ensure that you don’t lose out on sales this way. Even if your search bar functions well on a web browser, if it is faulty on the mobile app you will lose out on sales. All of the functionality on a browser should work just as well on mobile.



It’s clear that site search is one of the most important elements of your shoppers’ eCommerce experience. It’s therefore crucial to make sure that you consider all things, and don’t fall into any of the traps of the common mistakes listed here. If you avoid these mistakes, you should be on your way to an optimized eCommerce search experience.