7 Site Search Best Practices for Online Businesses

Are you looking to improve the search experience on your online store? 

Well, you’re in luck because in this article we’re going to share seven site search best practices that can help you enhance your eCommerce site’s search engine and boost your sales. 

As we all know, site search plays a vital role in helping customers find what they are looking for quickly and easily. 

But did you know that 36% of eCommerce sites don’t support thematic search queries, 49% don’t recognize symbols and abbreviations, and 39% offer no results for non-product searches?

So, let’s explore some internal site search best practices that can help you create an excellent search experience for your customers and drive more sales!

What Is eCommerce Site Search?

Let’s start by explaining what an eCommerce site search does. 

An eCommerce site search is like having someone who knows exactly what you’re looking for, even among thousands of products, and presents you with options that match your search query. 

Just like a helpful personal shopper in a mall, eCommerce site search makes your online shopping experience smoother and more convenient.

Now, you may be thinking, “But my eCommerce site already has a search bar, isn’t that enough?” 

Well, not necessarily. 

While having a basic search bar is certainly better than nothing, it’s important to optimize your site search to ensure that it’s easy to use, produces accurate and relevant results, and helps customers quickly find what they need.

How Does eCommerce Site Search Work?

It’s actually quite simple. 

When a customer enters a query into the search bar, the site’s search engine uses a complex eCommerce search algorithm to find the most relevant results on your website.

Of course, there are many factors that go into making sure that the search engine is able to produce accurate and relevant search results.

This is where best practices for site search come in. 

By implementing strategies like internal site search best practices and advanced search options, you can ensure that your eCommerce site search is working at its best.

Why Optimize Site Search?

Optimizing your eCommerce site search is crucial for providing a seamless and personalized shopping experience for your customers. 

Especially because over 50% of eCommerce sales can be traced back to customers who use a website’s search bar.

From integrating site search with your website’s design to implementing AI-powered search and analyzing real-time data, these site search best practices can help you enhance your site search, drive conversions, and improve customer satisfaction. 

Site Search Best Practices for Your Online Store

1. Integrate Your Site Search Into the Look and Feel of Your Website 

Your site search bar should seamlessly blend with your business’s brand image and website design.

By integrating your site search into the look and feel of your website, you can create a seamless and user-friendly experience for your visitors, making it easier for them to search for and find products on your eCommerce site. 

A well-designed and well-placed search UI with helpful features can improve user engagement, optimize conversions, and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

Optimize for Mobile

With almost 40% of searches coming from mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to make sure that your site search interface is optimized for mobile devices.

Mobile users have different behaviors and preferences, so it’s important to design a mobile-friendly site search interface with a clean layout, intuitive navigation, and easy-to-use filters or sorting options.

2. Recognize Typos & Synonyms

Customers often make mistakes while typing or may use different terms to search for the same product.

In fact, up to 9% of searches contain spelling errors.

Your site search should be able to adapt to these variations to ensure that your customers can find what they’re looking for.

3. Provide Filtered Search 

Implementing filtered search options such as by category, price range, size, color, shape, etc., can help customers narrow down their search results and find products more easily based on their preferences.

By providing convenient and effective filtered search options, you can help users discover products that meet their needs and increase customer satisfaction.

4. Implement AI-Powered Search 

AI-powered search technologies can really improve your search experience! They can give you helpful suggestions as you type, offer search prompts to guide you, and show you personalized results based on your behavior and preferences. It’s like having a search engine that understands exactly what you’re looking for!

Autocomplete

Autocomplete is a useful feature that you may have seen when searching for things on a website. 

As you start typing in the search bar, the feature will suggest search queries that match what you’re typing. 

This can help you find what you’re looking for faster and with less effort. 

For online shoppers, this feature can be especially helpful in finding relevant products quickly and improving their shopping experience overall.

Suggestive Search

This site search feature offers suggestions or predictions for search queries as you type in the search bar. 

It’s designed to help you find relevant search results more efficiently by offering suggestions based on what you’ve typed so far. 

It’s like having a search assistant that understands what you’re looking for and provides helpful suggestions along the way.

Personalized Search Results

Have you ever noticed how the search results you get online seem to be really tailored to your interests and behavior? 

That’s because AI technology is behind it, using your past search history, browsing behavior, purchase history, demographics, and other data to personalize the results just for you. 

That’s why the results tend to be more relevant and meaningful to each user.

Recommendations

Another great site search best practice is programming product recommendations to appear on specific product pages.

This searchandising tool can be programed so that higher-priced products are recommended to encourage upselling, and related products are recommended to encourage cross-selling. 

This can really boost your customer’s average order size and your overall sales.

5. Support Audio and Visual Search Queries

With the growing popularity of voice and visual search, it’s important to ensure that your site search can support audio and visual queries. 

This way, customers can search for products using images or voice commands, which is super convenient for them.

Voice Search

Audio search is a technology that lets users search for products or content on eCommerce sites just by speaking, rather than typing. 

It’s super convenient, personalized, and innovative, making the whole user experience better.

Plus, it can improve the accuracy of the search results and give eCommerce businesses an edge over their competitors. 

Image Search

Image search is basically a visual search engine.

Instead of typing in words, you can just upload or take a picture to search for products or content. 

The technology behind it uses image recognition to analyze the images and give you relevant results.

6. Include Marketing Tools in Your eCommerce Site Search

By integrating marketing tools like promotional banners and boosting capabilities into your site search, you can really make specific products or sales promotions stand out. 

This can help drive more sales and improve your overall merchandising strategies.

It’s a great way to leverage your site search to optimize your marketing efforts and boost your business!

Banners 

Banners can be a powerful tool to promote products, deals, and promotions to users who are searching for products on an eCommerce site. 

They can also be used to cross-sell or upsell products to users who are looking for specific items. 

For instance, if a user searches for a particular query, you can display a banner that promotes related products or brands related to that query.

Boosting

Another great site search best practice is the ability to prioritize search results based on your business goals. 

By boosting a particular product in the search results, you can give it more visibility and increase its chances of being sold. 

You can also fine-tune the search algorithm to rank products with specific attributes, like product name, brand, or category, that are associated with the product. 

This allows you to align your search results with your business objectives and optimize the user experience, helping users find what they’re looking for more efficiently. 

7. Analyze Search Insights & Data in Real Time

Collecting and analyzing search insights and data in real-time can be incredibly valuable in understanding customer search behavior, popular search terms, and trends. 

This information can help you optimize your site search and make data-driven decisions for your eCommerce business. 

Useful Graphs

Analyzing your customers’ search data using graphs can be the best way to gain insights and make effective business decisions. 

By examining metrics like the total number of searches, search geolocations, click-through rates (CTRs), and conversion rates, you can gain a deeper understanding of your customers and optimize your online sales. 

These data points can help you identify trends and patterns, such as which products are most popular in specific locations or which search terms result in the highest CTRs and conversions.

User Search Behavior

Accessing data on your customers’ search behavior can be a highly valuable asset for your online business, particularly when it comes to ordering new products and creating promotions.

With an advanced eCommerce site search, you can gain insights into your customers’ top searches, top clicks, top opportunities, and searches that did not yield results. 

This data can provide you with valuable information on customer preferences, popular products, and potential gaps in your product offerings. 

Examples of Websites with Great Site Search

Now, let’s see these site search practices in action by taking a peek at some websites that have optimized their site search feature.

Grape Tree

Craftelier

Glamira

How Can You Implement These Site Search Best Practices?

From integrating your site search into your website’s design to utilizing AI-powered search technologies, there are several site search best practices to consider.

However, it can be overwhelming to implement all of these features manually. 

That’s where Doofinder comes in – Doofinder is a powerful eCommerce site search solution that contains all of the features and best practices mentioned in this article. 

By implementing Doofinder, eCommerce businesses can expect to see a 20% increase in their conversions. 

Want to try it out on your website? 

Sign up for a 30-day free trial or request a free demo video to see Doofinder in action!