I worked closely with MonsterCable.com to implement their latest site search, and it was great working with them. Personally, I enjoy playing with electronics and have brought some of their headphones and home theater products, so when I learned that they were a client I quickly raised my hand and volunteered to work on their site. Since Monster carries such a wide variety of products for different purposes, visitors need to be able to quickly find the right product that fits them. When implementing the site search, I discussed the best methods with the Monster team to find out how to make the left navigation most intuitive for visitors. For instance, if a person searches for “high performance”, one of the first things they should be able to pick is what category it belongs in. Therefore we put category as the top refinement in the left navigation. Then after the person selects a category such as headphones, they may want to see both in ear and on ear headphones in their search results, therefore I recommended to Monster that we install multi select check boxes so that the user is able to include different selections. Another example is that a user may want both 5 star and 4 star rated products in their search result and this is where multi select check boxes come in handy. This feature is very useful because no matter what the refinement is, the user is able to combine refinements on the fly to create a personal view.
Another important feature that I worked with Monster on, was Rich Auto Complete. Monster Products are aesthetically pleasing and come in an assortment of colors, which is why Rich Auto Complete is a vital feature when visitors first touch the search. When typing in the search query they can actually see products show up in real time through the Rich Auto Complete drop down. This helps drive conversions for Monster since customers can directly access the product page by clicking directly on the product descriptions and images inside the drop down.
I also suggested to Monster to put search suggestions and related searches inside their search results. Not everyone will know the exact type of product when searching for a product. They may discover that when they search for “video cable” that they actually need to look for a “composite video cable”. On the other hand if a visitor knows exactly what they want, they can directly type in the SKU number and it will directly jump to the product page. Even if a visitor only has part of a SKU number, the product(s) that contain those numbers will display properly, I personally love this feature.
Send me an email at info@sli-systems.com or call 1 (866) 240 -2812 if you would like to hear more about how I worked with Monster Products.
