MagnetStreet, an online retailer of personalized save-the-date items and wedding invitations, has four distinct lines of business: one for real estate agents and general businesses, one for schools, one for brides-to-be and one for general consumers. As such, the company has distinct product lines for each business segment, which previously posed significant challenges in how MagnetStreet handled the different lines in its site search. Ultimately, MagnetStreet turned to us for help.
The solution we created, which has worked well for MagnetStreet and its customers, is to deliver search results with separate tabs for each distinct market, so brides-to-be aren’t seeing items geared towards real estate agents or school teachers in their results. If you go to www.magnetstreet.com and do a search for “save the date” you’ll see what I mean. Across the top of results are tabs for “All,” “Weddings,” “Business,” “Life Moments” and “Schools” – making it very easy to view the type of products you’re uniquely interested in. Results can also be refined by style, color, theme, product type and more – to streamline the search experience even further.
The results are telling. MagnetStreet’s analytics show that people who use the search box on the site convert at nearly double the rate of those who don’t, and twice as many site visitors now use search than they did previously. Additionally, visitors using site search view more than twice the number of pages per visit than visitors who don’t, and also spend slightly more per visit than shoppers who don’t search.
So, back to the original question – should separate lines of business have their own site search? The answer is: not necessarily – You can create one site search for the whole company, and offer separate tabs for each line of business. That will give you brand consistency across your different business lines, and also only one technology to maintain. As one of my friends once told me: “Sure, I could buy a boat with two engines instead of one, an go faster, but that will give me two things to maintain, instead of one.” So, words to the wise: keep it simple, and keep it consistent. For MagnetStreet, that approach has worked well.
