As we discussed last time, data mined from site search activity can be used to improve your merchandising in a number of ways. Use the following merchandising practices to help deliver a stand out shopping experience to your customers.
Offer More Products to Your Visitors
Often shoppers will enter your site through a product link from a search on Google or Bing rather than directly from your home page. When visitors land on a single product page, you run the risk of showing them an item that’s not the most relevant to their search, and you may miss out on letting them know you offer other products they might like.
You can solve this problem by presenting a merchandising banner that shows products relevant to their original search term. These merchandised landing pages can keep customers engaged and drive more page views and conversions.
Use Synonyms for Global Reach
Using synonyms is a great way to improve the relevance of your search results and avoid pitfalls like “no results” dead ends. Synonym groups are usually created by gathering words together that are correlated. The result is that a search for any of the words in that group will also trigger a search for the corresponding synonyms.
Synonyms allow you to adapt to the different words that people use to search, and keep your search results relevant. Even when different countries speak common languages, not everyone uses the same words to refer to the same products.
Make Search Results Highly Visual
When it comes to presenting search results in a simple and engaging manner, product images are indeed worth a thousand words. Displaying one search result image that’s significantly larger than the other thumbnail images is a merchandising practice that improves conversion and boosts sales. Larger product images that convert well include results from top searches, highest-rated products, best sellers and high-margin products.
Showcase Your Products’ Social Status
Today’s shoppers respond well to social validation from others. You can provide this support by showcasing social approvals, ratings, reviews and recommendations. Encourage your customers to share the best products from your site across their social networks by integrating social media buttons onto your pages.
Additionally, showing the recommendations of other influencers (e.g. top editors, celebrity curators, popular or emerging stylists) within search results is another merchandising practice that taps popular opinion to build community and grow sales.
For more tips, download our popular e-book Use Site Search Data to Improve Merchandising.
