From planning a trip to buying a dress online, text search is crucial in helping users find what they’re looking for on this vast, worldwide web.
Effective e-commerce site search relies on detailed product descriptions and optimizing the right product keywords. Moreover, features like auto-fills and search filters can help e-commerce stores offer accurate results.
When users visit an e-commerce store, the company has already taken a crucial step, because the customer believes this online store can address their needs. So after landing on the store, they directly go to the search bar to buy the product they want.
Let’s deep dive into this blog post to explore how e-commerce site search works and how it helps users find what they need.
Get to Know E-Commerce Site Search
E-commerce site search is a powerful tool that lets customers find products quickly in an online store. The efficient e-commerce site search results enable sellers to maximize their reach and revenue. Using the right strategy, e-commerce site search can be a powerful driver of sales growth and customer satisfaction.
When it comes to online shopping, the search function is a crucial element of any e-commerce website. This tool increases efficiency for users to look for products they want.
What Happens Behind The Scenes of an E-Commerce Site Search?
In simple words, an e-commerce site search works by indexing and retrieving information from a website’s product database. When a customer searches for something, the search engine analyzes it and matches it with relevant products in the database.
Let’s talk about each step in simpler terms:
Indexing: It’s like creating a catalog of all the stuff in your online store. The details of each product are noted down carefully like name, description, price & category. It lets e-commerce site search engines understand what each product is all about.
Retrieval: This is how it works, when someone searches for any product the site search engine goes through this catalog (index) and matches what the person is looking for. It looks for products like keywords, what type of stuff it is, how much people like it, and when it is added to the site.
Ranking: After finding the product that matches the search, the e-commerce site search engine delivers what should show first. This process happens through an algorithm. The process involves looking at things like how popular a product is, what customers have said about it, & how relevant is to the search. Depending on this, results are shown to users in an order.
What Key Features Should E-Commerce Site Search Have?
Auto-Complete
When you start typing in the search bar, auto-complete suggests words or phrases that you might be looking for. This way you discover products faster because it guesses before you even try to finish typing the product.
Spell Something Wrong
Sometimes during typing, we hit the wrong key or miss a letter. This can be handled through typo tolerance. It means the site search engine gets these typo mistakes and still gives accurate results. So when a user spell something wrong, the site search engine can figure out what he meant, and show the right result.
Synonyms
This feature functions as a wordfinder in the e-commerce site search. It analyses that different words can mean the same thing. For instance, if you enter the keyword “shoes” it can also show “sneakers” because they’re similar.
Faceted Search
Faceted search helps you narrow down your search results by letting you filter them based on different categories or attributes. For example, when shopping for clothes, you might want to filter by size, color, brand, or price range. Faceted e-commerce site search makes it easy to do this so you can find exactly what you’re looking for.
Product Ranking Feature
This feature sorts the search results in a way that’s helpful to you. It considers things like popularity, relevance to your search, and maybe even what other customers have liked or bought. So the most useful or popular items appear at the top of the list.
Mobile-friendly Design
This means the e-commerce site search works well on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. The search bar and results are easy to see and use on smaller screens, so you can shop conveniently from your phone or other mobile devices without any hassle.
4 Challenges of E-Commerce Site Search
Inaccurate Results
Shoppers get frustrated when they don’t get what they’re hoping for. It happens because some e-commerce site search engines are not efficient and don’t understand what shoppers are looking for. For example, if you search for “apple”, you might get results about the fruit instead of technology.
Inaccurate results can be frustrating because they waste your time and make it harder to find what you’re looking for.
No Results
Have you ever typed something into a search bar and got back? That’s when you encounter the challenge of no results. It usually means that the e-commerce site search engine couldn’t find anything that matches what you’re looking for. This can happen if you type something too specific or if the thing you’re searching for isn’t in the database. It’s frustrating because it means you have to try again or look somewhere else to find what you need.
Slow Results
Online store search results shouldn’t take forever. It happens when e-commerce site search engines take so long to show search results. It can happen due to several factors like the site itself being slow, or there’s maybe too much stuff to look for and get the right one. Whatever the reason, slow searches lead to cart abandonment and lost sales.
Overwhelming Results
Sometimes, shoppers search for one thing and get bombarded with too many options. It‘s like trying to find a needle in a haystack! This can happen if your search term is too broad or if the search engine isn’t good at figuring out what you’re looking for. Too many results make it hard to find the one thing you need because you have to sift through a bunch of irrelevant stuff first. It’s overwhelming and can leave you feeling lost in a sea of information.
Conclusion
To sum up, understanding the basics of e-commerce search is essential to improving customer satisfaction and increasing revenue.
All the terms explained like indexing, retrieval, and ranking processes work together behind the scenes and give shoppers relevant results. E-commerce site search can be improved by important features like autocomplete, product filters, faceted search, and mobile-friendly designs.
On the other side, slow search and overwhelming results make search less efficient. E-commerce site search tools like Convertopia provide an effective search experience to keep shoppers’ shopping journeys smooth. Ultimately, it enhances conversions and loyalty by solving search result issues and adding strong features.
Using an efficient site search tool like Convertopia is the best way to understand how search works on your e-commerce business. Book a free demo today.
