The “Other” Search

When online marketers and Internet technologists talk about "search," usually the image of millions of shoppers, researchers and office workers typing queries into Google or Yahoo or MSN comes to mind. However, there is another search that deserves the attention of site administrators and e-business managers.

What is this "other" search? It is the search function on your Web site, also known as "site search." Studies have shown that the conversion rate of visitors using site search on e-commerce sites is about three times that of visitors not using site search. Further, up to 90% of visitors will use site search when looking for your products, services or content.

Delivering Results
Consider the following customers using site search solutions from WebSideStory:
• Bloomingdale's reported that the ROI on their search investment was 10X—or 1,000%.
• Palm reported that the conversion rate of their site search increased 60% using a best practice described below.
• A Fortune 100 company's Web site recently saw a 4%-5% decrease in customer support calls after a recent search upgrade.

One in three visitors use site search first—before doing anything else on a site. If they are disappointed in their experience, the chances of them returning are slim. Visitors are telling marketers, in their own words, why they came to the site, and the site is not responding to those requests.

The smartest Web teams and the most savvy Web marketers are investing in and attending to site search with the same high priority that they associate with optimizing for, or buying keywords on, the major search engines, investing in email marketing software solutions, or attracting and converting prospects to customers. Furthermore, by combining powerful site search with informative Web analytics tools, these same website managers are leveraging site search to drive up sales, influence site visitors, better serve customers and reduce costs associated with customer service.

Best Practices
To get the best return on your site search investment, consider the following best practices:
Best Practice #1: Place your search box within your navigation. Site search should be something that visitors can access on every page of your site, whether they are in the shopping cart, the gift registry, the customer service section or in the product information pages. It should remain in the same place, just like any piece of global navigation. It should be at the top and should be prominent. Your visitors will be nearly twice as likely to use search if you follow this best practice. After you invest and optimize site search, you want visitors to use it.
Best Practice #2: Actively tune the "Valuable Top." For typical Web sites, the top 100 or 200 search phrases will comprise 40% of all searches done on the site. We call this the "valuable top" of all search phrases, and it warrants your active attention. As an example, Bloomingdale's discovered through their site search that the popular brand Juicy Couture was near the top of their queries, and tuned their site to deliver branded results.
Best Practice #3: Automatically handle the "Long Tail." After tuning the valuable top of search phrases, look for patterns among the "long tail"—the rest of your search terms—because there might be clusters that warrant attention. For example, you might see that customers are using product numbers. These can be quickly handled by enabling your site search to search for this data. In addition, make sure your search engine handles misspellings automatically; it's one of the simplest ways to handle a broad set of queries that lead to results not being found.
Best Practice #4: Provide rich results. Go beyond vanilla text-only search results. For example, the Web team at Palm recognized that the top search terms include product names, such as "zire." Now, the system injects rich promotions directly into the search results, the site search conversion rate increased 60%.
Best Practice #5: Guide your visitors. Because visitors tend to enter general search terms of only one or two words, provide a faceting and filtering interface on the search results pages so that visitors can narrow their request/query down as they go. Create an experience that's more like an offline store (browsing, asking questions, seeking help, building relationships between items). If you do not carry something online, but offer it in an offline location, use that opportunity to point the searcher to the answer to their question.
Best Practice #6: Measure. Manage. Optimize. Read your search reports for top searches and searches that result in zero results, and analyze trend data. Analyze how search contributes to various conversion events on your site—registrations, purchases, customer service inquiries. Follow searchers through their entire visit and do path analysis. Incorporate this data in making decisions about content changes, search tuning initiatives and other online activities. Search is a window into the visitor's mind. Compare that information to the actions they actually take after searching and you will gain valuable information about your potential customers.

Driving Business Performance
Investments in site search at leading Web sites have led to the following representative results:
• Site search conversion rate increased by 50%; u Online sales grew by 35%;
• Search-to-conversion rate improved by 49%; and
• Sales increased by 20% immediately.

If the "other" search is just a box on your site, you are missing a valuable opportunity. Take action on the best practices in this article and you will see immediate benefits to your online business.

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WebSideStory (www.websidestory.com) is a leading provider of on-demand digital marketing applications. Its Active Marketing Suite includes Web analytics, site search, Web content management and keyword bid management. Enterprises worldwide use these services to measure and improve their online marketing performance.