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Is Your E-Commerce Site Search Engine Intelligent?
Does it automatically leverage shopper behavior to capture more conversions?
An intelligent eCommerce site search engine should leverage the wealth of customer behavior analytics that are constantly flowing through it. Shoppers are telling you what they want every time they type a query. This is golden information that provides a competitive advantage, if utilized properly. After a search, shoppers are giving you even more actionable analytics by clicking on products, putting products in their basket, and finalizing transactions. An Intelligent eCommerce site search engine should capture these analytics, correlate the clicks and purchases back to the individual query terms, and leverage that intelligence to drive more conversions.
In SearchSpring, the “brain” that does all of this is called IntelliSuggest™. IntelliSuggest™ utilizes Javascript page tagging, much like Google Analytics does, to capture shopper purchase and navigation patterns all the way through checkout. The shopper analytics collected by IntelliSuggest™ are automatically applied to better influence subsequent traffic in order to capture more conversions, drive up average order values, and increase site usability in almost every area of the eCommerce search and navigation platform, including:
− The E-Commerce store’s primary site search
− “Rich” Autocomplete, which is the drop-down that appears as a shopper types a query. It provides both search term suggestions and product suggestions with product thumbnail images.
− Up-selling and cross-selling suggestions on product and basket pages. “Customer who shopped for this also shopped for…”
− Search and navigation on Facebook and Mobile Sites
In an eCommerce store’s primary site search, increased conversions are made possible by elevating the products that previous shoppers gravitated to after searching on the same keyword. As smart as a search engine’s ranking can be out-of-the box, that one specific item that most shoppers really want when they search on a particular keyword may be buried on the 2nd or 3rd page of search results, meaning some shoppers will miss it. When leveraging intelligent historical behavior patterns, you can place that “hot” item prominently near the top of results, automatically.
Intelligent product suggestions, shown on product pages as “Customers who shopped for this, also…”, are a natural extension of site search intelligence. Data collected and applied from intelligent site search can greatly improve your site’s up-selling and cross-selling capabilities. Through the recognition of similarities between a new users search and navigation patterns, compared to those of a previous user, the right product suggestions can be presented to shoppers at the right time. Ideally, alternative products should be shown on product pages, while complementary products should be shown on the cart pages. Compared to utilizing 3rd party suggestion software, the economic advantage of utilizing site search for product suggestions is huge, as 3rd party suggestion software is typically very expensive.
Automatically leveraging historical shopper behavior can put the optimization of search, navigation, and suggestions nearly on “autopilot”. However, Intelligent eCommerce site search also enables administrators and merchandisers to easily configure intelligence into the shopper experience, to drive more conversions. A strong suite of tools should be available to force the elevation of products from individual brands, for example, in site search results. Merchandisers need to be able to easily trigger banner promotions, or elevate products by season, such as making a summer item float to the top of search results at the appropriate time of year. Easy control of which data attributes will be searched, and what boosting factors are applied to them vs. other fields, should all be at administrators’ fingertips. Generally, Title and Description fields should be assigned relevancy-boosting factors slightly higher than other data fields. So many ecommerce search engines give very little control over these important things.
Core technology of eCommerce product search also includes strong stemming, automatic spell-check, and strong synonym functionality.
Intelligent E-Commerce site search enables administrators to easily make smart use of real estate on the page. Easy control of layout, such as whether certain filters (facets) are expanded or collapsed by default should be at the fingertips of the administrator. A smart search engine also leverages technology for speed, such as AJAX, which only requires the update of the refinement bar and products when a “color” refinement is clicked, for example. AJAX does not require the re-load of the entire header/footer, making it very fast.
For a free site search and site navigation review please inquire at info@searchspring.net or call (888) 643-9043
Dewey Halden is the Director of Sales at SearchSpring. SearchSpring offers advanced site search, faceted category navigation, Facebook product search, mobile site search, automated SEO of site search terms, and up-sell/cross-sell product suggestions.
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