2023’s Top Site Search Tips to Boost Website Conversion Rates

Offer Helpful Suggestions with Autocomplete

Ready to ramp up the search experience? As your shoppers begin to search, autocomplete provides helpful suggestions for their needs. Nourished Life makes brilliant use of autocomplete, offering potential product phrases on the left, product categories in the middle, and product suggestions on the right. All of these results dynamically refresh as shoppers continue typing out their full search query.

Searchspring’s autocomplete functionality even incorporates merchandising rules, filtering options, and suggested products based on individual shopper behaviours. With more relevant results being served to customers, you can increase website conversion rates and average order value (AOV).

Use Semantic Search

“Let’s not argue over semantics”. You may have heard that phrase before, but when it comes to ecommerce, it has a whole new relevancy. Semantic search on your website considers the words in different parts of your product data structure. For example, product descriptions, categories and attributes might all contain the word “blue”. But suppose a user is searching for “blue jeans”. In that case, semantic search identifies which words in the phrase are categories, attributes, and so on to intelligently rank the most relevant results higher.

Enhance Your Mobile Search Experience

Considering that nearly 59% of global web traffic is happening on mobile devices, according to Statcounter, your ecommerce store must have an outstanding mobile experience – including how users search and refine their product discovery.

Faceted Search

Keep your faceted search function (the ability to refine search results with filters) available without it getting in the way. A collapsible filter menu, as Boody uses, lets shoppers refine and hone in on their perfect products faster.

Full-Screen Categories

CostumeBox has an impressive product range. As such, several categories and sub-categories are needed to keep items properly organised. The company makes excellent use of category structures on mobile devices by making it a full-screen affair. Each time shoppers drill down on a category, they’re greeted with more specific sub-categories. The structured approach and clean, roomy display of categories help shoppers discover products more efficiently.

Leave Plenty of Space for Search

On mobile devices, you need to give the online shopping experience plenty of room to breathe. Your mobile search overlay is vital to creating that space. Instead of having a small search bar at the top or bottom, expand it to clear distractions from the rest of the page. Pair of Thieves is an excellent example of brilliant mobile design. On entering search queries, shoppers are also presented with a spacious selection of relevant product suggestions.

Study Your Search Terms

Google Search Console holds valuable data about the search terms that drive traffic to your site. Use the filters within the ‘Search results’ section to narrow and make sense of the results. For example, you can add a ‘Query’ filter with the words ‘what’ or ‘what is’ to uncover valuable questions your shoppers have which led them to your site.

Go Deeper with Site Search Terms

Use reporting tools to find what shoppers are seeking on your ecommerce website. These search terms hold valuable insights about customer intent, interests, and product trends.

Search keywords reports are available in Google Analytics (this article + video provides an excellent overview), allowing you to analyse search terms used on-site. Searchspring also has an easy-to-navigate site search report, which groups similar terms to make short work of understanding your data.

Use Keyword Data to Refine Your Faceted Search Options

Using the insights you’ve gained from your site search report, consider how you can further refine faceted search options (your search filters) to streamline the online shopping experience. For example, shoppers searching for “cotton dress” or “cocktail dress” may benefit from additional search filters such as material, style, occasion, season, or even sustainability.

By giving shoppers more control over their product discovery journey, you can put more of the right products in those shoppers and help them get to checkout faster.

Don’t Let Dead Ends Break the Online Shopping Experience

Zero results pages can leave shoppers wondering, “Oh, you don’t have those products?” These pages are often seen due to no exact keyword match being found. Don’t risk shoppers completely bouncing from your ecommerce website at this point.

First, review your zero results reports to see which terms lead shoppers to a dead end. To see this data, Google Analytics takes some tinkering – read more about the setup involved. Alternatively, Searchspring provides intuitive zero results reports without any complex setup.

With Searchspring’s reporting, you can even add synonyms and redirects directly from the report.

Synonyms replace keywords with other terms similar in meaning. For example, you may want to set synonyms like “runners”, “boots”, and “loafers” for broader search queries like “shoes”.

Page redirects will direct shoppers to the most relevant page based on their search terms. For example, queries such as “shipping” and “returns” will take your customers directly to those informational pages.

Not All Site Search Solutions Are Created Equal

Having a robust, intelligent site search engine is vital to driving increased online conversion, average order value, and revenue. Not all ecommerce site search solutions are created equally, though.

While several newcomers to the market and others have bolted on search functionality to their existing solutions, Searchspring (as you may have guessed from the name) is the original, trusted ecommerce search, merchandising, and personalisation platform.

Schedule your no-obligation demo to see how Searchspring can create shopping experiences for your customers that keep them coming back.

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