This week we’re offering a couple tips on how to improve relevance of your site search, and also how to leverage data in your site search reports to make improvements. Our own research shows that if people can’t find what they’re looking for on your site within the first few minutes, they’re likely to leave and possibly never return. In other words, if results aren’t relevant – and relevance can alter depending on who’s doing the searching – then your site search hasn’t done its job. Reporting can help you in this area as well.
- Don’t place search results in alphabetical order – While this might offer a logical way for site visitors to scan results, alphabetical ordering usually has no relation to the relevance of the results. Sometimes it makes sense to offer this as a sort option.
- Use “landing pages” when visitors type in specific product numbers, or when there is only one result for the search term – For instance, if a customer types in an SKU or product number, they should be taken directly to the page for that product. Another example: If a customer searches for “returns” you may want to take them straight to the page that describes your returns policy. This streamlines the searching process for customers who know exactly what they are looking for.
- Review your site search quality metrics to ensure your site search relevancy is improving over time – A good site search solution “learns” by tracking visitors’ aggregate search queries and click-throughs to deliver results based on criteria such as popularity. This means that, over time, searchers on your site are presented with the most relevant search results and can find what they’re looking for more quickly and easily. Improved searches result in more satisfied customers and greater sales.
