When people search your site, it’s not enough to just provide a page of results – no matter how relevant the results are (although admittedly, relevance in results does count for a lot). Customers often need added incentive to click a result and make a purchase, and merchandising your site search results pages is a great way to do just that.
Below are a few tips on “Merchandising” taken from our “Big Book of Site Search Tips” which we’ve been discussing the past few weeks. This is a very small sample from a collection of nearly 80 tips – all of which are compiled in a free, downloadable white paper. If you want to see the whole batch of tips, just click here.
And now for this week’s tips…
- Do create banners relating to specific keywords — Make it obvious to the visitor that they’ve arrived at a search results page displaying the correct product category. When customers search for a brand name or product that you may have a special sale on, you can include a keyword-driven banner at the top of the search results page to highlight that promotion. For example, someone searching for “Merrell” on a shoe retailer site might see a banner on the search results page that says “Free shipping on U.S. orders over $60.” When they click on the banner, they are taken to the site page for that offer.
 |
- Use banners to promote free shipping, or shipping discounts — Site visitors are focused on buying once they’ve searched for a particular product. By placing shipping offers within banners on search results page, you provide an additional incentive for shoppers to complete a purchase.
- Use synonyms to offer more results — For instance, if a site visitor searches for iPods, and your site offers other MP3 players, connect these and other similar items so that they appear together in search results. This provides shoppers with more alternatives, encouraging them to browse similar products.
