A smart site search engine is an essential tool for increasing sales. What key features should a site search engine provide in order to satisfy customer requests and help companies sell more?
The Required Tools for Effective Site Search
Internal search on an ecommerce site is an important tool for increasing the company's profit and improving the user experience. On average, about 30% of visitors look for a magnifying glass symbol or search bar on the site. Navigating with search is the most convenient way to find products. However, it takes time to go to the directory and set different parameters in the filter. Modern users aren't going to waste time with an inefficient search function.
If we compare the revenue generated by customers who used the search function on the site, it is significantly higher than revenue from those who did not use the internal search engine.
It's important for site owners to understand that the potential customers who visit their web page are ready to make a purchase in 90% of cases. Their decision to buy on a particular site depends on how quickly they can find the answer to their request. If the search tools work poorly or the site takes a long time to load, then users will go to competitors. Internal search improves site optimization. What tools should you have to most effectively address site search? We'll tell you in this article.
Loading speed of site pages and search results
The search function on your site is an opportunity for visitors to find the correct product or service right now. Whether they make a purchase is determined by the speed of the response to their query by your search engine. Your site content must be accessible. Roughly 50% of users will wait 2 seconds or less for a page to load. If the process takes 3 seconds or more, they go find an alternative. This in loading can cost a company more than $2 million per day.
Search algorithms with artificial intelligence
A site search based on artificial intelligence allows ecommerce companies to learn more about visitors and understand their main preferences. In order to help people to find answers to their questions faster, you need to use tools capable of natural and semantic understanding of language. This feature allows the computer to understand human language on an intuitive level.
Another benefit of incorporating artificial intelligence into a site search engine is the ability to correctly translate text accidentally entered in a foreign language. This includes being able to interpret typos, synonyms, and words with morphological or spelling errors. An effective intelligent search engine provides relevant content to users, which helps to increase sales.
Optimization for mobile devices and voice search
The number of mobile subscribers is growing at a rapid rate. When implementing a search engine on a site, it's important to think about smartphone and tablet users. According to the latest forecasts from experts, the growth of mobile traffic will increase 25% by 2025.
If a smartphone user is on your site, the internal search function should be optimized as much as possible for the phone or tablet in the following ways:
- Simple and accessible search bar.
- Output of variants and relevant results, reading words with typos.
- Fast response to requests on Android and iOS smartphones, in browsers, and on apps.
- Using voice search and correctly converting a person's words into text.
Over a quarter of the world's population uses voice search. People are used to asking questions by phone. “OK Google" and Siri are part of the user experience. Therefore, responses should be available immediately when searching on the site using the voice assistant.
Site search analytics and personalization
Data about how customers use the search bar on a site is very valuable for marketers seeking to build a strategy for promoting the company. Analytics allows you to interpret data about keywords, frequent queries, and user preferences.
Customers value a personalized experience. About 80% of customers equate the UX of the site with the services/products of the brand. If you individualize the UX and study the internal search data, you can increase sales by at least half.
Proper analytics can help you create a successful business idea to improve user engagement based on real requests from people.
We know exactly what tool is best for your website! Evinent Search is a unique search engine for your site that includes all the tools described above. With our platform, you'll be able to customize search results, learn how to understand customer behavior and build a profitable marketing strategy for promotion. Request DEMO.
