One factor to consider when building a brilliant site search is how stock levels should impact the search. A great search should deliver a product that the searcher wants to buy and that the retailer wants to sell. But what if that product is out of stock or low in stock?

There’s not a simple answer to that question and we see our customers take a variety of approaches.  It’s obviously a frustrating experience to try and buy something only to find that it’s not in stock. But by conveying stock levels and, if out of stock, providing updates and alternative products, you can help your customers stay on your site and have a better shopping experience. Make sure you have the right combination of these useful strategies on your eCommerce site.

Manage how products are shown

There are a few different ways you can manage the inventory your customers see first – you can choose to hide out-of-stock items or show them. Additionally, you can use refinements to give customers the control over what they see. Let’s explore the options and their effects.

If you show out-of-stock items, there are a few ways to do this:

• Show items in the place where they would have been in the search results; this keeps your products in the exact page location, so that popular but out-of-stock products can still be shown.
• Push them to the bottom of the page; this allows popular but out-of-stock products that would normally be on the first page to stay there, but to push in-stock products “above the fold.”
• Push them to the bottom of the results; this will push all out-of-stock items to the very end of the list, which means that the top searched items may not show on the first page if they are sold out.

You could also choose to hide any out-of-stock items in the search. This alleviates the problem of customers becoming frustrated when the product they find is unavailable. The downside is that you may miss out on a sale if the item will be back in stock soon.

Lastly, refinements are a good way to allow users to sort their search results. You can specifically create a refinement to show in-stock items, or you can set individual attribute refinements to only show products that are in stock. For example, if you’re searching for athletic shoes, you might find 95 items, but when you refine the search by your size, the actual number of shoes available in your size may drop to 40. All shoes that are not in stock in your size won’t be shown.

Show stock levels

If you choose to show all products, then it’s a good idea to show which items are in or out of stock. Show stock levels on a variety of pages, such as the search results page and product detail pages, so that wherever your customers land, they can easily know if an item is available.

This can be done with a simple ribbon overlay, which is the small ribbon or tag usually pictured on a thumbnail image. They feature various messages, such as “Out of Stock”, “On Sale” or “Free Shipping”. They can be used to show that a popular item is back in stock or to flag an item that is out of stock.

It’s also helpful to inform customers of their options. If a product is out-of-stock, then an alternative is to show that it can be back ordered, and possibly include an indication of how many days until it will be back in stock.

If an item is low in stock, it’s helpful to indicate that and show how many are left. This can be as simple as adding a note saying “only 2 left!” This can install a sense of urgency in the visitor – a “buy while there are still some left” feeling in customers.

Additional services for customers

Inevitably, some customers will find a product that is out of stock. When they do, try to help them get the item in another way. If you have brick and mortar stores, enable an online inventory check at the closest stores. For instance, Tractor Supply asks for a ZIP code to inform customers of the nearest store that has the item in stock. If you don’t have physical stock that customers can access, then show related products that they might also like, and give customers an option to back order the item.

Supply and demand do not always match up, and inventory levels may be mismatched at times. But by showing the best products, offering transparent information to customers about stock levels, and helping them find the product elsewhere or recommending similar items, you can ease the way for visitors and provide a better shopping experience.

Assume you’re searching for new clip in shoes for your road bike, but you’re not sure exactly what you want. You go to your favorite bicycle or sports outfitter’s website and search ‘bike shoes’. But instead of turning up only the shoes specific to bicycling, it also shows you a variety of other shoes for hiking, running and water sports.  Now you’re required to sort through a group of products to find exactly what you need.

For an ecommerce site, this process of wading through pages of products can quickly erode customers’ perception of your business. Whether your customers want a specific car part, a chiffon summer dress or clip in bike shoes, they want to find it quickly. In fact, according to usability experts such a Jakob Nielsen , if users do not find what they are looking for on your site, they will often assume the site does not have the product and will leave, rather than reformulating their search query.

Relevancy is, hands down, the most important feature of site search that drives transactions. When your site search returns results that your customers are looking for, they can quickly find and purchase the product. Luckily, there are easy ways to improve the chances your customers will find exactly what they’re looking for with the right technology, and a few easy-to-implement steps. SLI’s learning platform was designed to determine relevancy based on site search activity – it organizes which products are most clicked based on keywords entered into the search box. SLI improves search relevancy by not only displaying the most suitable products, it also continues to learn so that over time, the best results will be featured first.

In our new Big Book of Site Search Tips, we highlight a few tips you can use to further improve relevancy. Below are a few examples.

First, don’t alphabetize your listings (unless it really makes sense.) Alphabetizing may make sense on paper, but in action it can push the most relevant and popular products to the end of the page, or worse, to the next page. Keep your top-selling products where customers will quickly find them.

Second, use customer queries to understand their behavior better. Behavior never lies, and neither do customer queries. By observing what your customers are looking for, you can provide them what they need, and anticipate what new trends are on the horizon.

Additionally, you can lead customers directly to meaningful pages that you know they are looking for. This is especially helpful for searches for items that are all the same brand or type, or if they are searching for a service that has one specific landing page.

And beware searches that yield pages with no results. In ecommerce searches, it’s better to take your customer to a page that has other recommended or similar products, or to suggest other search query wordings that might help customers find what they are looking for. This reduces the number of clicks to get to a certain page and improves your site’s user experience.

Overall, it’s important to keep in mind that your customers are sophisticated searchers. Because they have used other effective search engines around the web, they’ll visit your website expecting a similar experience. By ensuring that search relevance on your site is just as good, you’ll meet, if not exceed their expectations for an easy shopping experience.

These are just a few of the many ways you can improve the relevance of your site; you’ll find even more ideas in our SLI Big Book of Site Search Tips 2012 Edition.  You can also learn more about improving your site search through our video tips at https://blog.sli-systems.com/resources/video-tips.

When you are in a niche market and your customers are looking for very specific products or information, it’s really important to have a website that can deliver highly-relevant results fast. That’s particularly true in the case of Bulk Reef Supply, whom I had the opportunity to work with recently.

The folks at Bulk Reef Supply know their business inside and out. Their website is not only a great place to find a wide variety of equipment and products for saltwater aquariums; it’s also a hub for all sorts of information related to reefing. They were looking to improve the ease of use for their customers by optimizing their website’s search functionality.

I was excited to work with them to provide search results pages that would give valuable content to their customers. We provided them with SLI’s Learning Search, which returns continually-improved results over time, and Rich Auto Complete, which enables the search bar with predictive text – every time a visitor searches for a product, the most popular search terms are shown, as well as visuals showing the most popular products. It’s a great feature that allows visitors to click directly from the search box to a product detail page.

We also found a number of ways to integrate features onto their search pages to optimize the usability of the site, including adding ratings and reviews, add-to-cart functionality, rewards points, and add-to-wish-list functionality. All of these added features cut down on the number of clicks a customer needs to make a purchase. We also added their quick look feature onto the search results page, which is an effective way to display a larger snapshot of image, plus price and detailed product information.

To solve the issue of showing relevant informational content, we added a cool tabs feature at the top of the search pages that indexes non-product content, such as how-to videos and instruction manuals. Through this, Bulk Reef Supply has created a full-service offering to their customers. It’s not only a great site to shop, but a great place to find information about building reefs.

It was a pleasure to work with a client who knew what they wanted, and were also open to our recommendations about best-practices so that together, we could deliver the best website experience for their customers. I also enjoyed learning about saltwater aquariums, and am thinking of building one for myself. With the help of Bulk Reef Supply, I think that I have a good shot at it.

To learn more about my work with Bulk Reef Supply, you can email me at discovery@sli-systems.com or call 1 (866) 240-2812.

As social media and mobile device usage transform the online eCommerce landscape, retailers are keeping a close watch on how these trends change the way visitors search and navigate around their sites. Two years ago we launched our first “Big Book of Site Search Tips,” which is still one of the most frequently downloaded documents on our site. But things have changed over the past couple of years, so we’ve freshened up the content and added new tips, and now have an updated version called the “Big Book of Site Search Tips 2012 Edition,” with 100 tips retailers can benefit from to improve their conversions and end-user experience. The Big Book of Site Search Tips 2012 Edition is available for download here.

In this new Big Book, we’ve included new tips and ideas about integrating social and other non-product content into site search, and how to make search easy and successful for the growing number of people shopping on handheld devices. Other tips categories include Refinements, Merchandising, and Reporting, so no doubt you and your colleagues will find plenty of ideas for ways to rev up the search experience on your site. And with the holiday shopping season about to get underway, now is the perfect time to implement some of the ideas illustrated in this book to ensure that your online storefront is ready for gift-buying customers.

For instance, you can add social sharing buttons to your search results pages, such as “Like” buttons for Facebook users and “Pin it” buttons for Pinterest users. You can also learn more about optimizing search for mobile devices with tips such as including product ratings for site visitors who are browsing for products in your stores, or giving the search box more prominence so that it’s easy to find on mobile screens.

We’ve also rounded up many ideas for drawing more attention to the search box and making it user-friendly – for example, adding a floating search bar, which always appears at the top of the page without being obstructive. Since site search users are more likely to convert – and spend more money – you’ll want to do everything possible to encourage them to return to that search box again and again.

It’s important to keep in mind that without relevant site search results, the tips in the Big Book will only take you part way to a completely customer-friendly search experience – so a site search solution that ensures relevance is also key.

Online businesses that work with SLI’s Customer Success Managers can benefit from expert help in getting these tips implemented, and also learning about new tips that we discover throughout the year. Of course, our CSMs can also help you make sure search results are always relevant, in addition to making site search as user-friendly as possible. Start improving site search today by downloading the Big Book of Site Search Tips 2012 Edition and make sure you stay up to date on the latest tips, tricks and trends by reading our blog at https://blog.sli-systems.com and watching our video tips at https://blog.sli-systems.com/resources/video-tips on a regular basis.

Creating a great e-commerce website is a team effort, and at SLI, we love to work with customers to make their online vision a reality. We recently started working with OQVestir, a Brazil-based women’s fashion e-tailer, and they’re the perfect example of how a site search implementation can actually be fun (and of course, create payoffs for our clients).

OQVestir is doing a great job of helping its customers shop the site – it has a clean design and is well laid out, and offers many of the vital elements that make for a good site search experience.  The images are large and clear, and offer alternate views. They have a cool feature where you can mouse over the pictures of clothing items in search results, and see an alternate picture of someone wearing the item.

OQVestir is following best practice for the search box placement – it’s at the top and center of every page. They’re also taking advantage of Rich Auto Complete to provide the information that site visitors are looking for most often. I also like the fact that the site design is not too busy and has plenty of white space, and that the refinements, page controls, and other important product information is easily found on every page.

During our deployment, the excitement we could see and hear from OQVestir really helped move the implementation along at a good pace, and helped build a strong relationship between our two companies. When I get messages from Mariana Medeiros and Rosana Sperandeo, OQVestir’s founders, it’s like talking to a friend. I try to take this approach with all of the customers I work with – I become friends with them and offer world-class service because they deserve nothing less.

I’m excited to have OQVestir join the SLI family, and we’re all looking forward to making its site search and user experience the best that it can be.