About
On April 20th at 12pm EST/9am PST, we hosted a 1-hour live webinar with an expert panel from BHFO, Absolute Web, Consult PCR, and Searchspring where we revealed tips and tricks to enhance search experience and boost sales fast.
Did you know that search users are 8-10 times more likely to purchase than a regular site visitor? But, 70% of searches are unable to return relevant results and 26% of searches end up on a 0-results page. Shoppers hate that! Think about it. You’re basically telling them that you don’t offer that product, leading to a jumping off point to go shop your competitors.
Searchers expect a simple, rapid path to the search results. Even as little as a 1% reduction in 0-result searches can lead to a massive spike in sales. Simply put, the better experience you offer searchers, the more they spend.
To help you reduce irrelevant and 0-results pages, we’ve invited an expert panel to discuss their top tips and tricks to enhance your site search. We focused on the following areas:
- Limitations of basic search plugin tools vs advanced solutions
- Strategic placement of search features
- Surfacing the most relevant set of products
- Similar recommendations, cross-selling, and trending products
- Category navigation, relevant filters, and sorting options
Ready to return more relevant search results? Watch the webinar today!
0:00
Hi everyone, Welcome to the webinar today. My name is Jason Ferrara, I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at Searchspring.
0:08
Really excited to have you with us today for our webinar, Enhancing e-commerce Site Search. So today we’re going to explore some tips and tricks on enhancing the shopper experience.
0:21
Topics we’ll cover are limitations of basic search plugins, strategic placement of features, surfacing the most relevant products, talking about recommendations and cross selling, talk about category navigation, filtering, sorting, how all those pieces come together for driving shopper experience.
0:46
So I’ve already told you my name is Jason Ferrara. I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at Searchspring. I’ll be the host today for your webinar. I want to give you a quick overview of Searchspring.
0:57
You know, our focus is really about understanding that you as a merchant, and that shoppers hate it when they go to your site and can’t find what they want.
1:07
If somebody can’t find what they want, they leave, they don’t come back. They go somewhere else.
1:12
That’s no fun.
1:13
And our goal at Searchspring is to really help you as a merchant, get the right product in front of the right shopper at the right time.
1:22
We do that through site search, product merchandising, and personalization.
1:28
And using those products, you drive greater conversion, increase satisfaction and loyalty.
1:34
Really, that’s about driving an amazing shopper experience.
1:40
So, I’m excited today, because we’re joined by three panelists.
1:47
They know a thing or two about e-commerce, they know a thing or two about site search.
1:53
Sergio, Sofia, and Drew.
1:57
It’s much better when they introduce themselves. Trust me, so, Sergio, why don’t we start with you just give us a quick overview of who you are and why you’re here.
2:09
So, absolutely, Jason, thanks for our for our for the kind of intro and, you know, I’m honored to join this panel. My name is Sergio.
2:18
I’m the CEO and the e-commerce specialist here at absolute Web, for the past eight years, And an agency that was primarily specializing in full service e-commerce solutions, for the past 20 years plus, and, you know, always. You know, I’m honored to join this panel, as I’ve been involved, a number of projects where goals were placed around search, optimization, about catalog, navigation, personalization, product, recommendation, And I hope that my experience can be helpful in this panel today. Thanks, Jason.
2:56
Yeah, great. Thank you Sergio. Sofia, how about you? next?
3:03
Morning, everyone! Hi.
3:06
Thank you, Jason, for the introduction, and thank you for having me today. My name is Sofia.
3:11
I am the Director of Digital Marketing and E-commerce for BHFO.
3:20
We are a fantastic fashion. Multi brand retailers and the retailers and yeah, I really hope that my experience with my current role and my previous roles, but I had a lot of interest for e-commerce and search site.
3:40
Great, thanks, Sophia.
3:42
Charles, is it me having Internet can trouble or do we have just a little break up on? Sophie has ended you know, Do you is on her and OK, great, thank you. I’ll introduce Charles in just a second, I revealed him too soon. Drew, why don’t we have you introduce herself? Sergio and Sophia, you can turn your camera back on that’s great. Drew, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?
4:05
Perfect. Thanks for having me, Jason. The founder CEO of Consult PCR. We’ve been around almost 15 years. And the name of the game for us is just driving better engagement of your own assets, so your e-mail program, your website, SMS, and your customer base.
4:22
Work with a lot of like really fun, exciting brands, like Home Depot to major League Baseball, to fast growing.
4:27
due to see companies like mud Water, Schieffer and fat head. And everything in between, so I’m a self professed fanboy of Search and the way that you can really leverage it for higher conversion. I’m excited to be on here.
4:40
Great. Thank you. First time anybody’s ever described themselves as a fanboy of search. So thanks for doing that. And, we’re excited to have you out here. Of course.
4:50
You all heard me mention Charles, who’s our webinar producer, back behind the scenes, moving the slides, making sure that we’re on track, watching the questions Q to make sure that he can ping me when we’ve got. We’ve got some great questions. So, don’t, so that, anyway, that’s Charles, You’ll hear me mention him once in awhile.
5:10
And, also, the questions queue.
5:12
All of you have access to a question queue listening in today. Please take advantage of it. If there’s anything that Sophia or Drew, or Sergio, say that you don’t understand, type it in the questions queue.
5:24
If there’s a topic that you’d like to elaborate us to elaborate on, put it in the questions Q. We are absolutely happy to answer those questions, and and we’ll do it in line with the rest of the conversation and we’ll leave some time at the end for other other Q and A So, thanks very much.
5:42
All right. Charles, let’s go talk about today’s agenda.
5:45
It’s a pretty simple agenda. We have a number of poles. We like to ask poll questions, because it’s great audience participation. I can’t have you raise your hand here, because I can’t see all of you, so we’ll do these polls. It’ll help Sophia and Drew Sergio. Understand a little bit more about your experience, your concerns, Your your tech setup, Your engagement in this particular topic.
6:09
So we’ll start with those polls. Those polls will lead us into panel discussion. And then, as I said, Q and A, please don’t hesitate to use the use, the Q and A So why are we talking about site search today? At Search Spring, we did some research toward the end of, last year, around what our clients, and what the market was really looking toward in 20 22.
6:35
These are the 10 hottest items that people that people brought up. Enhanced site search was the second item, so relevant to the market, to the industry, to people’s lives. Obviously, as Drew Drew, told us all relevant to his life as well, and you know, Sofia being in practicing this business as an E-commerce retailer. Obviously, it is near and dear to her heart as well. So, that’s why we’re focused on site search today.
7:01
and before we get into talking about all of that, we’ll start with our first poll.
7:06
So, the first poll question is: Are you using a free Site Search plugin or a Premium Site Search tool?
7:15
Give you a couple of seconds to jump on in and answer that question.
7:21
I can see the results coming in.
7:23
It’s all very exciting, you know, when you see the results coming in, knowing everybody’s here and engaged, I like that.
7:31
We’ll just give it a quick second here.
7:37
Alright, Charles, I think we’re good. I think we’ve got pretty much everybody who’s going to be in.
7:42
Alright, so I’ve got one more poll before we hear from our panelists on this. What it looks like is, majority of you are using a premium tool, some of you on free, and some of you don’t have a search tool, so I think what we’ll get to today, certainly in the questions that I’ve been thinking through in my head, will be lined up nicely around this topic of what you can do with what you have and where you go from there.
8:06
So, the next poll question: What is the number of skews on your website?
8:12
Did it break down there?
8:15
Not looking for exact answers, just general ballpark.
8:20
Voting is coming in fast and furious. Thanks, everybody, for being on top of it.
8:31
And I think Charles Walker gonna call it there. So it looks like, let’s see, let me write this down here.
8:37
Give me some second for a little dead air. So, it looks like we’re sort of in the most of us are in the in the mid-range there a thousand to 50,000, and then we’re looking at over that, and just under that. So, I think a good, good conversation will be had around size of business, and where tools come into come into play. So let’s get into that first part, the first part of the panel discussion.
9:06
No, I always like to ask the panelists, what do you see? What do you see in that poll, Right, Is there, is there anything interesting in those poll results that you saw, or is that pretty much what you expected, as you jumped on the panel today?
9:26
Drew, you wanna? do you wanna get started?
9:30
Yeah, I mean, I It’s really interesting, seeing the correlation for a thousand SKUs, and around, like, 67%, and then using a premium tool, be about the same. I mean, really, that’s the maturation of a business when we think the premium tool is really going to help, especially from a merchandising strategy. It’s just it’s, it’s a lot of work with that excuse to be able to try and manage manually or through a basic plugin. And so I think that correlation makes a ton of sense where if you’re under that, Maybe you can get by with, you know, the Not the premium tool. But once you start getting into the thousands, I think it becomes a lot to work with and to be able to manage for your internal team. And so that actually doesn’t really surprise me too much to see that correlation In the results.
10:16
Yeah. Great Thanks for calling that out, Sophia.
10:18
You know, as a Not that that Drew and Sergio are practitioners. But if I think about, you know, your role on the panel, that’s like as the practitioner doing this, you know, what?
10:28
Where were you when you’re in this kinda life cycle?
10:32
Well, I had experience with both. My previous company, I was working for a cosmetic company.
10:38
So, obviously, the number of skews we’re way below 50 wasn’t small number of skews. So we use a simple plugin into Shopify glass.
10:48
So, although that plug in was doing its job in terms of search, it’s obviously the limitation even for me in terms of key words.
10:59
There was a limitation I could only at funerals, very basic things that, for me, the big problem was when I was launching a new product, when I needed to run a campaign, I wasn’t able to customize the page as they want to meet.
11:14
Those flags in a really limited, simple, basic search.
11:19
But still, it doesn’t give me as a vendor the possibility to merchandise my main page, my landing pages, my PLP accordingly. So find running a campaign. There’s nothing I can do about that. So it’s a limitation because the meat conversion rate optimization is my primary focus, so when he counts, so our online experience. So getting the customer to converge faster, it’s a better rate and bid higher value.
11:44
It’s my challenge. So that’s why I believe that a better tool. It’s paramount to achieve those goals.
11:51
Yeah, Very good. And, Sergio, how about you in terms of the let’s start with quickly the the poll results, any other thoughts that you saw different or similarly to Drew?
12:03
Let’s, let’s do the tack that part first and then we can get into a couple of other ideas.
12:07
Sure, Sure.
12:08
So, yeah, I was expecting probably the ratio of using a free tool to be higher, But I think the adoption of these premium tools are getting more and more, and I think, where we might be in, let’s say, in a period, where it’s not about only about finding these tools, and kind of like installing it using. But it’s actually leveraging them to its full potential. So I think maybe these are people that are joining this webinar, but also in the industry. Because that we’ve worked with a number of brands where they do have, for example, Searchspring, installed, or other software for premium search, or recommendation. But they’re not fully using it.
12:55
So I think it’s, you know, it’s up to some of us to two, showcase how those, you know, how those tools can be used, engage into different initiatives, and so on.
13:09
So I think, you know, in terms of like the poll results, just, I’d like to see that I like the fact that there’s quite, quite high number for premium tools. But, I think, like, what are we seeing, at least in the last year or two years, they’re not used to it to their full potential.
13:27
Yeah, That’s a, that’s a great point. And, you know, in my, in my other life, when I’m not moderating panels, you know, webinar panels as, as managing or the marketing function. It searchspring.
13:40
That’s a constant concern of our whole team, like what technology are we buying, why are we buying it, and are we using it to its fullest potential. I mean, that is a real, that is a real challenge.
13:53
Maybe, you know, Drew, maybe we can ask you this question next is like, How do I know if I’m not using the full potential? I mean, theoretically, if I’m not using the full potential of a tool, do I even know what the full potential is? Right? Just use it.
14:11
Good question.
14:12
Yeah, it’s a great question.
14:13
I think for metrics that we like to look at and again, as a fan of search. And it really big way because similar to Sophie, all we obsess about is conversion rate.
14:24
Search, you typically see a 3 to 5 X conversion than you do on any other page on the site.
14:30
So, the name of the game really is to be able to drive as much traffic to that search feature is possible. And so, we look at making it much more prominent and the navigation, and what’s going on.
14:43
And so, for us, if you’re getting, know, the sweet spot is a minimum of about 10% of your total sessions are utilizing search in some way. That’s when you’re like, OK, that’s an alert.
14:53
If it’s a large percentage of your traffic, at that term, then maybe it makes sense to have a premium tool. So you can really unlock the value of the conversion elements that a advanced tool would be able to give you.
15:03
And then, if it’s below that, then it’s, like, there’s things that you can do to be able to make it more prominent and your navigation that will get into both for desktop and mobile.
15:12
And then, I think the other key is, you know, how many search results are producing irrelevant results, or, you know, the no results. And, I think that’s when you want to look at, OK, we have people there.
15:22
We’re getting a high percentage of utilization, but we’re not quite seeing the results that the users are expecting, whether, it’s, be, you know, completely irrelevant or it’s showing that null. So those are a couple of key metrics that we do look at. We’re making those recommendations on, doesn’t make sense to do a premium tool versus you know a plugin.
15:43
Yeah.
15:43
And Sergio and you’re in your role when when you have clients coming to you, is it clear to you when they’re using the full potential is it clear you, when they’re missing some key feature of a product. You know, how do you, how do you deal with that? How do you communicate that to them?
16:00
For sure, want to highlight Druze. Great answers for sure. Some of those things we’re also trying to to accomplish and recommend.
16:10
Willie Notice is that some merchants by installing?
16:16
These tools kind of expected too to do magic battle. If I can. Now, it does, of course, out of the box. It does. already, a lot of great things. It’s using the data and the attributes better and it’s providing you based on the history of searches.
16:38
It already creates a better experience via iPad or but in my experience is.
16:46
Merchants don’t really understand the full, you know, sometimes the full value of the tool like this where you can, in addition to the Druze recommendations, you can create personalized journeys.
17:00
Even using using search, really, because people are, you know, people are very used to just going to even a new site and using search right away, Yes, they might use a few seconds to just check out the homepage, or the landing page that they got, their searches. So, so important. So, you know, especially like even with large catalogs or like large brands is, you can use search and search results to personalize either by different preference or different searches, but also by geolocation so on. So, I think that that’s the, you know, the biggest opportunity when, you, know, when brands reach out to us.
17:40
Yeah, that’s great, I do think that personalization topic. Very important.
17:46
And I’d like to get into that in just a minute, But you also said something interesting, and I’d like to ask Sophia about this, which is about the data and that, you know, out of the box, plug it in. It’s using your data differently.
17:58
Sophia, was your Was your data ready to go?
18:03
When you changed from, From more of a basic tool to an advanced tool, did you need to which need to enhance that data? Did you know where their data issues?
18:14
And then, I’d like to have Drew and Sergio comment on that, too, just if this is such a fundamental issue with technology, Right?
18:22
Yes. So we, we went in a bit of a mess. I mean, our inventory, our castle, a huge.
18:29
So we had to clean our inventory.
18:32
We had to find a way that logic that we want to feature on the website. We had to really clean our catalog insert tags.
18:42
Because without clean data, you can have the best tool in the word, but still that, that search that customer experience on the website. It gets very hard and I really have to say that our Searchspring Account Manager leaves, Colleen Schneider. She has been amazing with us, has been so patient.
18:59
She helped us cleaning up, also helping our understanding will the issues where, because, you know, we were so used to work in a way It used to, you didn’t think that was an issue.
19:11
Whereas, we really relied on her a lot, especially at the beginning of the waste into it. But we need to do such massive cleanup of data and, and even now, we know how to insert new data. When we have new goods that need to implement that to our catalogs.
19:31
We know how to enter them correctly, straight away, so that they can be searchable, and, you know, they can be maximize to the fullest. It was such a massive. Thank you to Colleen for that.
19:44
And it’s been a huge job for us, really.
19:49
Kelly, pretty humble, But he’s amazing her so much, Right? I mean, this is gonna get back to her, so we know. So. So Drew, let let’s talk a little bit about that. Data prep.
20:02
It sounds like there’s a fair amount of Dataprep.
20:06
Who carries the burden of that Dataprep?
20:08
How would I, how would I, as a practitioner, even know that this is an issue that I’ve got?
20:14
like, just it’s almost a, feel so big. Like, how do I start breaking down the issues that I might have in my data?
20:21
Well, it depends on the platform, and what the structure is, How you’re putting the data, but you need to have sound architecture, because ultimately, you’re very limited with, with Shopify on what you’re able to put in, you know, across the categories of title, better description of what that looks like. To be able to repurpose it specifically around our merchandising strategy for search or for your collection pages.
20:42
And, yeah, I mean, we see it across the board. I mean, you know, we had a fashion brand that didn’t even have the color variants, as, you know, an individual, you know, kind of scope, so we had to kind of go through and sort that when you have 16 different colors on one product, that can be a little bit of a nightmare.
20:59
We don’t handle that. It’s a thinkless job, I think. And it’s something that you ultimately have to do. And it’s absolutely critical.
21:08
It’s a huge lift, but it does pay off so much in the end because then you can get a lot of the fun things that Sergio was talking about around personalization and making sure that it is relevant and it’s popping back results, that ultimately makes sense. So that they’re not just getting frustrated, and then exiting the site altogether, you’re spending all this money driving them there, why not do whatever you can to really capitalize, to make sure that you can convert them as much as possible. So it’s, it’s, it’s just, it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of hours. I’m sure Sophia can probably attest to it. It’s, yes, it’s not a lot of fun.
21:41
It is, it is, but then, as you said, it pays off, like another example that I talk about fashion.
21:47
It’s denim jeans. You would say that across every branch, everybody uses a 26,729 and so on. Now, you’ve got some brands that you small, medium and large and now they use 1, 4, 2, 0.
22:00
So, we entered products based upon what the manufacturers, you know, the size of the manufactures. And so, that was the mayhem. It’s just a little example.
22:09
So now, we have a standard procedure when we answered a product.
22:14
But when we had to clean all of that data, it was crazy. And obviously, people were getting annoyed because I am searching for 29, and I get just limited number of brands. And then I’m seeing, I’m checking for the single brand, and you are selling anything from that brand, And that was a disaster. But thankfully, thanks to Search Spring, and they team, we’ve been able to clean it, within a month he took, it took us a little while.
22:40
But now it’s up and running.
22:42
Perfectly, hoo, hoo, Sophia, who was on, other than people that you work in, That searchspring who was on that team.
22:50
To, to build those, those procedures because it strikes me as if it’s, if it’s difficult, phones are ringing.
22:58
If it’s difficult, potentially, you’re shipping the wrong thing. If it’s so who’s on that team to build that standard procedures?
23:07
Those, obviously, I work very closely to with customer service.
23:13
They react from hands-on customers.
23:16
Talk to them, e-mail them, complained to them, but then obviously, once we figured out, What was the issue?
23:23
Now, our team, I’ve got our IT person, and then down to the team of junior people, that they have simply to enter the manifest when we have a new, like, buy from, from a vendor. And we’re getting you something, gifts, and either. And we need to enter on the website. So we had to install to have those procedures.
23:43
And when we train somebody, even for data entry, which is paramount, how you enter into the products into the system, They have to understand that, if it’s just an example, if it’s a pair of jeans, we’ve got two parameters. If it’s a small Enter, at 26 or whatever, that could be.
24:00
It’s for antenna, 28 so that everything is cohesive from the beginning, so that we don’t have to go back P And again. But now, we know, and so we implemented, does, know, everything and this gets fast to everything. and everyone, customer service, has those charts.
24:20
So that if a customer is an issue, they can say I wasn’t 28 of the American Zeros.
24:26
Italian 42, whatever it is because that for us, has been a nightmare, resizing, international size.
24:34
Oh, gosh, everybody, but now we are OK.
24:37
I’m about to say now we’re OK.
24:39
We sorted out the data was dirty, dirty in a way, valve, as was mentioned. Sure, Sure. And, Sergio, in terms of last last question on the, on this data topic, although sometimes I feel like we could talk about data Clinton cleanliness, you know, for for an hour.
24:58
Are you working with clients to build that sort of standard procedure, or are you taking that lift on yourself?
25:04
How are you interacting with, when you get, you know, when you get that dataset, and you say, oh, OK, here’s what, here’s what needs to happen next.
25:11
Yeah, no, of course, the early experience working in different industries helps. So, we already know a lot of these, you know, that’s a groundwork on a fundamental work to get the search experience and catalog navigation better.
25:27
But, we’re always working with, with the brand. It’s a, it’s a teamwork. Because at the end of the day, Sophia mentioned there’s customer service. There’s that can provide important, you know, issues that we can resolve with these initiatives, and you’re not talking to different in different departments looking at analytics. So, it’s definitely worth, I can definitely say in terms of the data.
25:52
Obviously, it’s so important, and just and everything, with, what we can help is using these, these tools, again, is customizing the experience based on category our product type Customers right now, know, obviously a year over year, they becoming more impatient and like they already have some so many expectations from shopping with other great brands and they don’t want to take their experience less right with somebody with a brand that they stumble upon right Now. So, our job here is definitely, depending on the data type. For example, is maybe having less filters right? after we clean up the data on certain collections as to maybe having maybe more on if the product is that type of, right. Like, it needs to be very particular. It’s, it’s a huge inventory, and you need to segmented.
26:50
So that, and I think one more thing to add on this groundwork, configuring it, you know, make the experience better. I think that’s all great, fundamental, but I think a lot of opportunities also lost in monitoring and acting on the data because search trends, they change, you know, seasons change. People change, right, and it’s, I see a lot. And where I try sometimes to be proactive. And even looking into, you know, we’re talking search screen, looking at the dashboard seeing some trends seen, for example, some low results on certain pages and so on or even. There’s a trend on searching something that you don’t have, maybe products on. You can enhance that, experience with other product recommendations or, you know, promotional banners and so on so you don’t get to your customers to a dead end that’s. that’s where, you know, you could potentially lose that customer forever.
27:45
So, yeah, monitoring and acting on the data, I wanted to highlight that.
27:49
Excellent. Thank you. So, here’s what I want to move on to the next topic.
27:54
But I’ve already taken, Hold on, Charles Gift, we can just back up, because I want to summarize quickly, thank you. I want to summarize a couple of things, and I want that, I want to get back to a few of the things we talked about the next section.
28:05
But, if I think about the, this first section, this, the first part, limitation to Basic Search Tools versus Advanced Solutions, I guess, the way I would summarize our, our conversation here is catalog size is when you really make that switch from something basic to something more advanced.
28:23
When you make the switch to the more advanced, understand the capabilities of that advanced tool, What you can use now, and what you can grow into, because there seem to be lots of things that advanced tools can do, but you may not be taking advantage of it yet.
28:39
The importance of data cleanliness, so, it doesn’t matter what tool you have if that data is not clean enough to use.
28:45
And cleanliness means different things, right.
28:49
Cleanliness could be mean misspellings, cleanliness could be like so, few of you are talking about.
28:54
gene sizes, You know, they vary, if I’m in, if it’s a European manufacturer and American manufacturer, for example, So, try to standardize those things.
29:03
With an eye on these tools, are used to impact conversion, right. Sure. You had a great quote here, which is you know, you’re spending all this money driving people to the site.
29:13
well, let’s make sure that when they get to the site, there’s something they can. There’s something they can take action on.
29:17
So conversion is key, and then another reason to fix the data aside from conversion is that, once you have your data in the format it should be in, you’ve got all these opportunities for personalization and customization that you may not have when using a basic tool, or you having dirty data. So that’s how I would summarize that first section. Anything anybody wants to add at this point?
29:43
OK, great, yeah.
29:46
All right, well, I just imperative back what what you said. So you guys alright, so Charles, sorry about that. We’re ready for the next two poles to more here. What percentage of searches on your site are returning irrelevant results?
30:02
Oh.
30:06
Say.
30:09
Potentially painful question. I feel like you feel free to jump in and give us the truth.
30:16
It is time for this.
30:26
So, you can get a couple more coming in.
30:31
All right. There we go. Thanks, Charles. So, less than 20, 33, 20 to 40, 19. I’m just writing these down, 6 to 40.
30:43
Loved the answer. I’m not sure we’re gonna dig into that a ton, which is very good. So, before we get on to the next, let’s go to the next poll question. What percentage of searches on your site end up in a zero results page?
31:09
OK, getting those answers coming in?
31:16
And I think we’re about their charles’, So let’s see. We’ve got less than 10% at 39 10 to 201821 to 35 Greater than 30 and 38 I’m not sure. So that’s fantastic about the greater than 30. But let’s talk about I’m not sure plenty because there’s plenty to unpack there.
31:39
If if we’re not sure, so with those two polls What Sofia dru, Sergio, what jumps out at you? What’s what’s kind of most important to as you look at those two polls for us to be talking about? Obviously, I’ve got questions related to this topic, but we should probably hit those those things, so, Sergio, what’s most important to you what jumps out at you?
32:08
Yeah, So, it’s, it’s interesting, I just noted those down. For the first of all, I’m not sure.
32:14
41%, and for the one, the second. 138% Think, that’s quite a quite high percentage. And this speaks kind of, like, we just saw, what I said a few minutes ago.
32:26
The real opportunity is in monitoring and acting on what you, you’re, you’re seeing anything on analytics in your search dashboard, and.
32:38
I think, there’s, there’s so many things that can be done. Of course. And it also, depends on the brand and type of product that you have.
32:45
But, um, 2, two.
32:51
Combat these zero results. Of course, you’re looking at the data, seem like the most popular ones, and you start from the top to bottom. Obviously, the biggest traffic goes to, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, and going through those and discussing with your, you know, your marketing team, like, what would be best. You know, it was exactly.
33:07
That would be a particular brand, but you don’t have you would look into, you know, similar similar styles are similar on brand, and you.
33:15
I think also what I’ve seen is brands that I use some more personalize, even burbidge on those type of our pages convert better.
33:27
Because like it’s a lot of automation swirled around robotics, you know. I think if you’re, you’re being a little bit more open and being like a very down to Earth, you know, verbiage or banners and visuals, people tend to, you know, engage better, so. Yeah, I would say maybe that. I’d let you know, I’ll let others to maybe add more.
33:52
Great. Sophia, let’s talk to you next and then, Drew, we’ll get to you after Sophia.
33:56
Yeah, I just second what Sarah was just saying, and also I’m not surprised that a lot of people, the answer. I don’t know. I didn’t know, because he didn’t even know I could search for zero results, and now, when I log in my dashboard, this is the one that I did analyze the post.
34:15
So, that mention, Sandra mentioned an example that happened to me, many customers of ours, but many of them, were searching for a specific brand, then it took us a little while to understand, OK, we don’t have that brand on the website, but we do have great alternatives for that brand. So we created a global campaign based upon several keywords.
34:43
Keywords that people were searching about that brand. I was, I remember, approximately, around 30, 32 different keywords combinations.
34:51
So every time a consumer searches, those keywords, this combination of key, was about the brand that we don’t sell, They not only get, it, custom made message, like Angela was saying, so we created Guesstimates, Reply, saying, We don’t have that brand.
35:09
but look at what we have, because we had amazing alternative. So we create an ad hoc, and Absolutely, merchandise PLP entity. So, we don’t want to give them the possibility to bounce tempt them with something similar. Sometimes best of the best Surprise. When they have just shown us a very high intent. So users can quickly click on a product and that product even though it’s not the product, that we’re searching for a, very, very similar, rather than having to start their search again or leave my website together.
35:45
So ideally, with sufficient use of data.
35:49
I believe that those recommended products should be contextually relevant and popular to increase the likelihood of a peak.
36:00
So so for me, checking in the dashboard that zebra result searches re.
36:06
We are I was missing on sales, I will just thinking, yeah. I don’t sell that brand.
36:11
Says he’s gone, boy, you know, I’ve managed to leverage that zebra result. Create a landing page and now the zero result is bringing money. So it’s great.
36:23
Yeah, that’s, that’s great, great comment there.
36:25
And, you know, it made me think of, It’s a little funny to me. But it is definitely a new problem. If I were to walk into a Nordstrom and ask for a brand, they wouldn’t have, or they didn’t have, they wouldn’t say I’m sorry. We don’t have that, you have to leave the store. What they would say is, Sophia, they said, Oh, what is it that you like about that? Right? Let me ask a couple of questions.
36:47
We have this thing, which is better, frankly. And you know, then I walk out with that saying that they really helped me, so like we’re doing that same thing. It’s just not a person. Drew?
36:58
let’s look at the, the poll results, what jumps out at you or you know, touch on the touch on zeros volts for sure. Or irrelevant results Or anything else in the poll that you see?
37:09
Yeah, honestly, it’s just validation from what I see anecdotally talking to brands every single day, and I think it’s what I’ve talked about with the poll results last time.
37:18
It’s this evolution of the brand, we get a lot of pushback for sub brands and we don’t even want search. We only have 10 SKUs, why does it matter?
37:27
And, you know, one was a beverage brand doing a lot of revenue.
37:31
We’re like, well, maybe they search by ingredient. Maybe they search by either, there’s a lot of questions, and it has high intent.
37:38
So, putting search on there. I don’t think there’s a brand where it does not make sense, to at least have search available.
37:44
And then then you’re in the slight conscious and competence for like, OK, I have search, but I’m not really sure for leveraging it the right way.
37:51
And a lot of them don’t even know that data is available with the high percentage of people. Just not even sure. And you can use advanced tools.
37:59
That’s where you’re gonna get a little limited with what you’re able to do unless you are very savvy with Google Analytics, which can be challenging, where, OK, now you’re starting to see that they’re getting irrelevant results, or getting these number of results. So, what can we do?
38:13
And then that’s when you can really get sophisticated and small tweaks, you know, it makes such a huge difference.
38:20
And being able to make it more custom must more personalized to sophia’s point, but if they’re there and they’re search in, the last thing you want to see, as a brand owner, zero results, like you want to make recommendations. You really want to think through and have data to sergio’s point, be able to support some of these insights. So, when you make these recommendations, you can actually see it in real time. And start running experiments.
38:41
What Facebook? getting so expensive these days, and cost of acquisition.
38:45
Being able to really customize this and be able to like own it and do such an incredible job can can make a dramatic difference in terms of like bottom line, profit, and top line revenue, take advantage of that traffic.
38:59
Yeah, great! Thank you, I think I think that you bring up an amazing point about ownership and owning that that data, you know, I think it again.
39:07
I’ll just get back to my other life, when I uncover some data that maybe I don’t, like, I got to own that data and say, Well, wait, here’s something I don’t like, let’s go solve that problem, like it’s indicative of a problem, that we have to solve not indicative of, my management of that necessarily.
39:25
It’s just like, let’s take this on him, solve this problem.
39:28
Had a great question come in during this. It’s a two part question.
39:31
I think we answered the first part, which was Can you redirect zero search results to other products? And I think, Sophia, you did a nice job of talking about that. Hey, if you’re looking for this, like, obviously, you know, We’ve got other things that can that can help you there.
39:47
The Second part of that question, though is is there ever a time that you can get down to no zero search results?
39:56
possible? If not, If you laughed the hardest to get to answer that you get to answer first. So technically speaking. Yes, we can create queries. Right?
40:12
And always have always have a page that would replace the 0 0 results. Let’s say if I’m going to type in just it, or even on purpose, right, just took a few, you know, a code in there and just hit enter. You can certainly, and I think it might be a good, you know, maybe a good for certain, certain brands to have.
40:36
Especially if you’re, you know, have a large catalog, or, But anyways, you could. the answer is yes. However, is, if you’re doing that, you should still, especially for that case, you should monitor even, kind of the trends in the results in analytics, even more.
40:56
Because look at the keywords that are searched and mark, and then create something. Maybe you have zero results for that, but you can have a better, better, no results page for that specific keyword.
41:08
Yep. Yep, Thank you.
41:09
And I like, I like how you’re thinking about that in terms of, what do you do when you get zero research search result, rather than, how do I go through and eliminate every single one surgery or nod your head, or talk to that one? Yeah, I mean, Jason, what you said, when you talk about the physical experience of going into a store. We do the same thing with the website, so having no results will be the same equivalent of going into a store, and you have a very specific task of what you’re looking for. Maybe it’s a brand or article of clothing, and not being there, and there’s not a customer service or person on site. And so you’re just sitting here like, well, what do I do? Well, what if it takes a few minutes? You’re walking out, and so it’s the same thing happened on the site experience, so for us, you can provide the recommendations, and you know what, Sophia that with you know Oh, you don’t find this brand, here’s similar brands like all that To be able to put in place.
42:04
But what we also recommend sometimes the Fed is just completely unrelated make customer service, you know, kind of support very prominent. You know, kind of on this page where it’s accessible, or if they’re still not doing it, maybe it’s a live chat, popup mitigates the phone number being able to submit a ticket.
42:19
Because it’s that same thing if you’re in the store and not being able to find what you’re looking for, and so even if it does, is, it could be, you, know, passport to eliminate, But, you know, if you’re a beverage brands, someone’s typing, and t-shirts, probably not going to be, you know, that relevance. We want to just think through some of these, like circumstances, too, I think.
42:39
Great, Thank you. I do want to just add one more thing right.
42:42
In terms of this question, No, results, I think no Results page, honestly, it’s still a good page to have is just how you’re leveraging it. Yeah, You could, you could have, again, a landing page just for those?
42:57
No results page, so you don’t have it, but I think you can leverage it differently. You know, depending on what they search, let them know you don’t have it, right, I think that’s, that’s, that’s totally fine. But just what are you doing? What else are you doing on the page?
43:12
Yeah, sorry, I’m making a note, because you said something important here, which is, let them know you don’t have it. We, this topic came up in a webinar a couple of months ago, and it was around shipping and the issues that everybody was having shipping things, and there’s no supply chain problems, and what do we do about that? And really, what we do about that is, be honest with the people who are going to tell them it’s going to take longer than you thought.
43:40
Offer them something if you need to, but frankly, just the, just the way that you’d say this things on back order.
43:46
I don’t have it right now, I can’t meet your date, but, you know, well, will meet, we’ll get it to you when we’ve got it. That’s that honesty, the same thing, zero search result. Well, OK. We don’t have this thing, but we do have other things that are like this.
43:59
There’s a, there’s a, there’s a big sense of confidence and trust that you can build with, with and in that experience. Thanks for that. That’s, that’s really great. So this, this section is theoretically about tips and tricks for enhancing Site Search.
44:14
So we have about 10 minutes left in the in the panel discussion.
44:20
What I’d love to have you talk about is just one tip or slash tric, however you think about it, that you would recommend to a client or you’ve done in the business that has helped somebody’s site search.
44:38
And Drew, why don’t we start with you? Just give us an example of something, and we can talk through it.
44:43
Yeah.
44:44
I mean, I think there’s two things that, really, there’s three things that search accomplishments. And so for us, talking about higher conversion, we want to drive that percentage of sessions to search as high as possible, and continue to focus on that.
44:59
And so, what we recommend, a lot of times, both for desktop and mobile, is making it very prominent. On your navigation.
45:09
We even have run, split test by adding the word search, as opposed to just having the magnifying glass. You know, the little search feature there.
45:18
Just adding that one element can increase the amount of traffic going to search and utilization, 10, 20%.
45:26
Even a little if you don’t want to do that, and your navigation started crowded. Like a hairline fracture. It’s like a border. Just to draw the eye to it a little bit more on desktop.
45:36
We have 100% recommend, And then I think, on mobile, making a sticky. Meaning, if I’m scrolling through and being able to still having the search bar be prominent, so that if they’re not finding what they’re looking for in a short amount of time, that can very quickly go to the search feature. And then you do all the bells and whistles with an advanced tool where you’re really optimized for not getting the irrelevant results.
45:58
Then even we’ll go a step further and even have it in the little hamburger NAV. You know, that pops up on mobile your mobile menu, having that there as well. And so you know?
46:07
Almost across the board, we very rarely see brands that have just nail that in every aspect. And it’s a great way to be able to experiment because there is such a large percentage of traffic, and these small tweaks can really make a huge difference in terms of conversion.
46:23
Great. Thanks, group. Sergio, how about you?
46:27
So, it’s a difficult question, because I have so many, and I don’t know which one to recommend, because it really depends if you’re, let’s say, you know.
46:36
In the electronics, for example, right, or in a para. But since we have, for example, you know, BHF, all present here, probably, I can say, and it’s a very broad industry on clothing thing.
46:52
What I recommend, and that, I’ve seen, a lot of times, it’s not being used, is split the view on the search results, for example, for apparel, if you have different colors, to show them all of them.
47:05
Instead of, for example, if you have a shoe that runs in three styles, instead of showing just one result of that, split into three, I think, I mean, it’s, it’s a huge, huge experience lift, and maybe just adding to that, Because you’re, let’s say, you know, you have 20 results, 40 results, people go back and forth. So, I think it’s very important for, for people when come back to get back to the same position on, on the search result. I chose this because, honestly, I’ve seen just a very significant improvement on the experience and kind of like some metrics when, when brands to that.
47:48
Yeah, great. I love that sort of innovating there and helping people along there along their journey.
47:55
You know, it’s like, it’s like personalization. It’s like me offering you complimentary things if I’m in person, so that’s of interest. Yeah.
48:05
And Jason, just since we had a few examples from real life, I would go into stores. And, for example, for shoes, as I mentioned.
48:14
And I might look at at one particular shoe that comes in different styles. And I might look at one second, and I don’t don’t like. And because of the color, for example, the reason ended, and the third one does not go, wow. This is a really cool, cool shoe, whereas the first where the same like layout, right? But just because of the style. I’m choosing it. So same thing. Like we’re translation translating this human experience into the online store.
48:42
So things like this where we can kind of emulate the same experience and get people engaged for, Show no play play out in the long term.
48:53
Yeah.
48:54
Lighting thing, When you’re able to take that data and give somebody a human experience, Uh, through through the computer surgery jumped in there.
49:03
Know, I think just to add on what Sergio said, I think it’s eliminating the clicks to commerce by having multiple, you know, kind of results right there. Instead of having to go to the PDP and then being able to flick if it’s there and it’s accurate. That can go directly to that, and then it’s going to populate your eliminating friction. And so, that is ultimately going to increase the conversion, as well. So, I think that’s a great point. I just want to tack on like we always talk about how can we eliminate those clicks to commerce. And that’s why search does convert at a higher level is because they have the intent, they already know what they’re looking for. It’s your job to make sure that you produce the most relevant results to what those searches are.
49:40
Very good.
49:41
And, Sophia, let’s talk about that, like to tip the tip or trick a thing you’re doing that, you know, enhance site search. Enhance findability of things on the side. Yes.
49:50
Well, everything that the gentlemen’s I’ve just said, that’s absolutely our everyday life.
49:57
And on top of that, I really do rely a lot on customer service. I’m very much involved with answering questions their clients, know.
50:06
Ask them the website, because I can understand if you’re not featuring something, not only on the product page on the PDP, but maybe something that I can add to our filters on the left-hand side.
50:19
And, again, even for filters, as much as we do for Search.
50:24
I’ve got my sticky Ben Banner on the left hand side, for me, since there’s a as important as search.
50:30
So don’t forget about your features, Don’t forget about the possibility of mission dazzling and customize and PLP.
50:38
Once you know, people land on appeal P, that’s important. And then, again, going back to the no results data, even those pass them along to our merchandising and product team. The insights we get about specific brands or items that customers want, and we do not currently offer, helps me, helps us improving our inventory and business goals, and he can bring, you know, extra cash flow. So, I do release and to customize and try to understand, through customer service what they want.
51:11
And so, I tried to deliver.
51:14
Don’t listen to them.
51:16
Yeah, I love that idea of collaboration.
51:21
I feel like it’s easy to, I mean, I’m, I’m in this room pretty much by myself all day long, so I know it’s easy to forget about collaborating with other teams. I go to the sales meeting every single week, because what they know is stuff that I don’t know when they talk to prospects and customers and that sort of thing. Incredibly important to do and that point came up in a webinar a couple of months ago. Again, I keep, you know, these, these things are evergreen issues. Which is, how do you collaborate with the rest of the people on the team?
51:51
Because your front door is not just the domain of, the three of you get everybody in the company, right. That, that’s incredibly important, and then understanding that data, and how do you use it?
52:03
There was a question that came in, that I’m going to have to paraphrase, because it somehow left the question queue, and I don’t, I don’t really understand that, but I think I got it well enough to, to be able to paraphrase here and that.
52:16
And that paraphrase is, If, I’m changing, what I if, if somebody searches a term, I get zero results, but I redirect them to some other page, do I lose the data thread that is This term Risks returns zero results so that I showed them this thing OK, so. I Love it, so talk through and talk through what you, know, what that, what that means.
52:46
No.
52:47
Because when you, you have to manually create a global campaign for that set, so it’s you inputting the the keywords and the keywords combinations so that when you check the data analysis for that campaign, you still see, how many people have searched for those keywords? So you don’t lose the data. You get more data.
53:07
So, but if you could be just, oh, this is a zero result.
53:11
If you create your campaign, also, you see which kind of combination of keywords, how people are searching for that specific was, you get even more data. So, the answer is not, just do it. Feel free to, just don’t worry about it. Excellent, OK, great. Yeah. Lost data is makes makes me, it makes my skin crawl, so I’m glad. You mentioned that. All right, sorry. I’m looking into different places for questions here because we’ve had some really great ones.
53:40
How do you deal with customers that enter and I’m going to quote this ridiculously specific search terms.
53:54
So, I don’t know. Drew, you’ve got any thoughts on that?
53:57
You, we’ve all got our subjective opinion about what ridiculously specifically.
54:03
But I think the spirit of that is I’m going to enter something really long. How do I deal with that?
54:11
Yeah, I’ll put it as a failure, because I feel like that’s more of you deal with that on like, the brand side, to be able to answer those questions.
54:21
Well, for me, it’s really about combination of keywords.
54:24
And then, obviously, somebody’s incredibly specific boy.
54:28
But at least if you have a combination of keywords that something can pop up, because for example, it’s just red leather boots.
54:36
We high heels and whitesell that could be, and that brings app so much of it. So even how do you narrow it down?
54:45
So you’re going to have massive results, and that’s why I keep on saying filters at paramount because maybe you can help somebody featuring down, narrowing down, that’s super wrote, says We got amazing field test and so if you can learn from that super growth, key, word combinations, I OK she was looking for shoes high heels, and why?
55:07
So do I have all of these on my PDP Do I have those on the fetus could they be maybe they were able to filter down in that way, so they’re simply? Searching for that crazy amounts of data and so maybe it’s my fault that I’m not providing. It seems to me to Learn from those like a lot It’s rating site because maybe I’m not providing what they’re looking for. Not in terms of products, but in terms of features.
55:34
Yeah. Again, collaboration is something I just heard here.
55:38
And the other thing I heard is, learn from your data alert because your, your data is actually your, your, the voice of your customer, right? And, so, they’re there ridiculously long search term, is actually what’s in their brain. What they are going to play, you know, so learn from that customer and then be able to turn that into something specific.
56:00
And I know we’re at the top, Jason, to have a chance to to that real quick. I think what sophia’s hitting on that we haven’t spent as much time on, it’s like, additional tip or trick is filtering and sorting, because you also want to maybe eliminate the need for the search to actually take place. And I think what we see a lot of times, and like more your collections or your category pages, is you want to think about it, like similar to another navigation. So, if I’m clicking Tops, then I’m clicking Shirts. I don’t want you don’t want choose to kind of come up and then take them all the way back from that, So you really started to think about this like inverse pyramid and giving them what to do, and what we see.
56:38
A lot of times, this brands don’t even have the multi select available, or if they do, it populates the page again, that has a negative impact on SEO, that has a negative impact on site speed.
56:49
And so, I would just leave with, like, filtering, and sorting, and using search, and the data from that, to be able to, like, make those changes is critical.
56:59
It’s fundamental to, you know, keep leading them further and further down, that funnel, so that you can convert them and get them to buy lots of lots of learning in the search data. Right? There’s a lot of uncovering intent in that Search data in a lot of ways to improve living in that data. And it’s important to treat it, as such, right? It’s all. It’s a living thing.
57:22
All right, we’re a little bit over our time, 12 1 by my o’clock here central time. Thank you everybody for joining us today for the webinar. I really want to thank Sofia and Drew and Sergio for your time and your commentary and your willingness to share your insights. Really means a lot to us at Searchspring And hopefully it means a lot to the people on the call. Lots of great. Lots of great items discussed this will be demand, will do a blog post about it. So there’ll be other information on there.
57:54
We also had a couple of questions that did not get answered so after this Sergio Sofia, Andrew I will Maybe shoot those questions over, you get a couple of thoughts and itemize those up and send them out to people to try to get those answered. So thank you for joining.
58:09
And for everybody on the call, I just want to mention that we’ll be having another webinar, May 18th, Personalizing the shopper experience. We talked a lot about personalization today.
58:18
It’s on the list of hot items for 2022, so join us for that on the 18th at 12 P M Eastern.
58:28
So, thanks. Thanks, everybody, again, really appreciate it. Charles’, thanks for doing a great job behind the board, there, and if you join us next time, we’ll see you next time.
58:38
Thanks very much. Bye.
