Whenever I used to search for ecommerce blogs, the first thing it’s returned was shopify. Or when I start typing iPhone and it auto populates the results. And always had an impression that all the big brands names are only returned on first page, no matter what you do. But I was wrong.
The big brand companies know the significance of search, how important it is to connect to the consumers and boost your sale. They have been, setting aside a budget and investing in technology so that customer remembers the experience and the offerings made by them
But as a store owner, what have you done to get that visibility? It’s not about whether your store is small or big, its amount making your presence felt in the industry and there are some very simple ways of letting the people know about it, without hitting hard your company budget. You would see a significant improvement in your site search, connecting with your customers and increasing the conversion rates. Let’s have a sneak peek to the easy ways of doing it
Do you have a search feature on your site?
Just other day, I was browsing one of the website and was looking for a book, but couldn’t find a search box and they expected me to browse all the categories to find it. I simply closed it. That’s what the user mentality is, they need search feature on your website, also on your app and also on mobile version of the website, or else they are gone forever.
As a consumer, why I should browse all your categories? In this age of technology where we get replies from other part of world in seconds, waiting for a product to search it, sorry customers don’t have that much patience.
I personally hate some of the sites on mobile for simple reason; it takes load of time to look for a product. If you are comparing this to a retail store, where consumers need to browse through sections, you are mistaken as in retail store there is assistance and customer could be guided to the particular section he has been looking for, which is not the case with the online store.
So, the verdict is to get one!
Placement of your search box
Where do you place your search box, the color scheme you choose again plays the trick. It shouldn’t be sidelined with color your chose for search box, neither it should be of small font size, making it hard to read.
Placing it at the top, sides, and center or at the bottom it’s something which you guys can decide, but look at it as customer would look it. Wear his shoes and then decide on the placement
Because showing is half job done, then it’s to the customer to use it or not. . Then consider the color theme, choose the font and you are done.
Search should be fast enough
You typed in a word say Apple and then looking at the timer for few seconds, you are dead! Trust me, again people time is valuable, you simply can’t expect them to wait to get results on. It should be super quick. You hit enter and results are shown.
It’s a simple comparison with Google, Google is setting new records daily with its advancement to retrieve results quickly and so if not exactly like Google but somewhere near to them you need to make a mark.
How to make it faster? May be a big server, enhancing your memory or if you are not willing to dwell into the traditional model, dive into the cloud based hosting. But make sure to make it FAST.
The Auto-suggest feature
Well, we should blame Google(or say thanks) for introducing this habit of auto complete. It’s so easy to just type in one or two letters or words and Google does the rest for you. And now we are so addicted that we want it on all websites.
The auto completion feature is also the beauty of search engines, type in few letters or words and it would in nanoseconds display the most relevant statement for search, accurately. The beauty of it is fastness and how prediction happens leading to accurate results.
This beautiful piece of work is actually supported by set of technologies and huge amount of data set. How Google achieves it, well they have many data collection points, which once collected is analyzed and trends are taken into account, and then using predictive analysis, the predictions are made.
The feature although seems simple but would boost your sales like rocket. Just imagine a customer is searching on your webpage, found it and was successfully able to hit BUY button. If the person selects the popular statement rather than recommended one, he would go to the results page without typing the entire name, and this in a way provides assurance to the customer as what they are looking for has been searched by others too. What else you need? You boosted your sale and also gain confidence of the customer.
None in this world, I assume wouldn’t have used Google and they are somehow accustomed to auto suggest so just bring it on and let customer know you care
for them.
Images to a product along with Description plays a vital role!
A picture is worth a thousand words. And we are well aware how marketing stunt man, use this power to take a deep dive in customers wallet.
On the same line, we need to consider the image search as a very influential tool. What you need to be sure of is that when a user hits search, the image and one liner description does appear on the result page. If you are already using auto suggest, make sure to have thumbnail image being populated beside the auto search results in the dropdown
Collect data points on what people on your site is looking at
I being a blogger always look for search keywords which made them landed on my webpage. It in a way gives me an insight on what is the keywords used and how could I increase foot counts on my space.
Same principle is applied to e-commerce platform as well. Collect the data points as what are products people are looking for on your website. The plain explanation here is that you need to know what consumers are looking for, then only you would be able to provide that. So simply make it measurable.
The Verdict
It’s plain and simple, a search box is a magic box turning your footfalls into buyers so investing time and money is a sure shot way of getting more. So set up one and cash some money out of it.