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If you can’t find it, you can’t buy it…
Veröffentlicht 15/03/10 von Dirk Dupont
A large percentage of visitors arrive in your webshop via search engines like Google, Bing or others. But do you also have a search engine on your site? If so, do you know how it performs?
Studies have confirmed that nearly 50% of shop visitors are using the on-site search to find the products they are interested in. Search has become one of the most important features of a site. Often visitors don’t explore the navigation or the navigation doesn’t help them to find what they are looking for and they go straight to the search box. In other words, visitors are relying more and more on the on-site search capabilities of your site. But the on-site search is also a great way to collect valuable information that can help measure your site’s overall effectiveness.
Intuitively, you might think that looking at the top 10 of most used search terms should be the first thing to do. But you can gain much more insights from analyzing your on-site search results.
How many searches do visitors conduct while being on your site? What is the conversion of search visits to sales and which search terms convert best? What is the average number of items per order for search visits versus non-search visits? What percentage of exits happen from the search result page because visitors are not finding what they are looking for? What percentage of visitors use on-site search and get no results? And there is much more to analyze.
What should you also look at when studying your on-site searches? Identify aggregate search terms and look for common patterns or large percentages of people searching for the same thing or the same types of things. Look at the most common search terms based on where people search from (which section of the site or from which pages). Compare the search terms used by first-time visitors against those used by returning visitors or previous buyers to identify what questions each of these groups of visitors need answered.
An effective use of web analytics can help you understand your site performance, also as it relates to the usage of on-site search. Once you understand the on-site search behavior, you can fine-tune your search and site navigation, and not only greatly improve the user experience but also boost your conversion metrics. However, research also shows that many visitors will abandon a site if they do not find what they are looking for on the first page of results.
Softlution has implemented several on-site search tools, from open source solutions such as SOLR to commercial search & navigation packages like Endeca, FACT-Finder, Fredhopper and others. Each of these solutions have a different level of sophistication and reporting capabilities. Softlution can also help you set up your web analytics in such a way that you can perform a meaningful analysis of the on-site search on your site.
Do visitors of your webshop find what they are looking for?
