How Can eCommerce Leverage Search to Increase Revenue?

More than a million digital retail transactions happen every day. The impact of e-commerce is far and wide, rippling from small businesses to global enterprises. Online marketplaces have been on the rise since the mid-1990s with the launch of well-known sites like Amazon, Alibaba, and many more. Today, we know that there are at least 2.14 billion digital buyers, which represents 27.6% of the 7.74 billion global population.

From electronics to food items, people buy everything online. As more and more consumers are resorting to purchasing goods via online outlets, eCommerce websites are looking for ways to generate more revenue. In this article, we’ll give you some tips and tricks to help you increase revenue through your online store.

There are many ways to increase eCommerce revenue, and today we are going to focus on what is called the “on-site search” feature, alternately known as an internal search. This is the most underappreciated feature on many websites. Statistics tell us that around 84% of companies around the world do not optimize their on-site search. Only around 15% of global companies have a dedicated team that actively optimizes their on-site search. That alone makes a huge difference and helps this 15% of companies increase eCommerce revenue. 

What is On-Site Search? 

With the rise of Google, search is becoming more popular than ever. Site search is a feature that allows users to quickly search a website’s content and pages using a search bar. The user is then presented with relevant content for their search and a direct link to the page. A well-designed site search provides the reader with what they want. It is so vital that Google provides a specialized tool to perform a search within your website.

Why is On-Site Search important?

In today’s world, consumers want to find what they are looking for promptly and hassle-free.

With eCommerce websites and marketplaces selling hundreds or thousands of items in the same category, it can be challenging for consumers to find what they are looking for. That’s where search comes in!

A performing search on an eCommerce website is of the utmost importance as it saves a lot of time and effort for the user, who doesn’t have to go to a particular category and then browse for hours to find the product he’s looking for. On the contrary, a search tool serves as a shortcut to the content your visitors are looking for, is fast and efficient, and shows all the pages on your website for the topic they are searching for.

That’s why if you have an eCommerce website, you must ensure that your search tool is efficient, as an unoptimized search leads to around 12% of visitors losing interest. And if a user does not get what he’s looking for or is not satisfied with the results of his search, he may leave your website and look for results elsewhere, most probably to your competitors.

As we’ve seen, a performing search engine proves to be a helping hand in satisfying customers’ needs. Effective site search means better usability, which can increase sales, as customers who get what they want are likely to make a purchase. Research shows that websites that offer an efficient search tool generate nearly double the revenue and get more conversions.

Read also: 3 Steps to Improving Search Results on Your Website

How Can eCommerce Leverage Search to Increase eCommerce Revenue?

As we’ve seen, leveraging the search feature and creating the best on-site search experience for your customers has many valuable benefits, the main one being that it can help your eCommerce website increase revenue. But how can Search and conversational AI for eCommerce can help boost your revenue? Let’s take a look at the five key features that will allow you to make more money out of your eCommerce website. 

1. Personalization

In addition to providing perfect results and helping consumers find whatever they’re looking for, an on-site search can also suggest products that match the consumers’ interests, based on previous searches. Research shows that 40% of buyers are influenced by product suggestions and predictive searches. By pushing some related items, and personalizing these suggestions to your users’ interests, you increase the chances for them to buy from you, as well as the value of their cart if they end up purchasing related products along with their desired product.

2. Predictive Search

Predictive search is a functionality that enables the search tool to prompt suggestions as users are typing in the search bar. Indeed, it will predict the complete search input from the first word. For example, if a customer types “best protein” the search feature will suggest “best protein powders”, “best protein shakes”, “best protein shaker”, etc.

It has many benefits, the main ones being that:

• It increases the findability of your content as some products might be too difficult to find through navigation,
• It enhances the user experience, by helping them navigate your eCommerce site more easily and find the products they’re looking for even faster,
• It improves retention and conversion rates.

3. Faceted Search

This is a feature, also known as “filtering”, that helps the users to narrow down the results of their search. By using this functionality, even a confused customer can find, and ultimately buy, the product they’re searching for. Filtering down through categories, to find the perfect “black dress in size 10” or “Adidas sneakers in size 8” will save your customers some valuable time, help them find what they want, and encourage them to buy from you, thus increasing your eCommerce revenue. 

4. Federated search

This is a functionality that allows web users to search various sources at once to find out the best results. In an eCommerce website or marketplace, having a federated search functionality is very useful as many data sources, here other retailers’ websites, have to be searched to find out the product availability. Enabling consumers to find products from other retailers, on your eCommerce site, enables them to buy from you, rather than go on the retailer’s website.

5. Implement search to a chatbot

Chatbots are already implementing search as they’re powered by a search engine to find the answers to users queries. But the next step allows the users to search for items or products within the chatbot itself, without having to browse your website. It’s like offering your customers a dedicated web-shopper that can help them find what they want, and even complete their transaction without having to leave the chatbot.

Now that you understand how on-site search can help to increase eCommerce revenue, you might wonder how to optimize your on-site search feature. Look no further. We have great technology that can help you with it. 

Inbenta AI Technology to help you increase eCommerce revenue

When choosing a site search, it is of the utmost importance to ensure that the solution you choose has the capability to understand human language. Our Search module is powered by Neuro-Symbolic Al and NLP (Natural language processing) technology, which enables it to understand the meaning of users’ questions regardless of slang, jargon and spelling.

NLP Technology – It is a technology that helps computers understand human language and interactions. By now we all know that computers mostly work in 0s and 1s. Converting this binary language into human language and vice versa is difficult. Our technology even understands poorly structured sentences and enables the machines to understand them too. 

Neuro-symbolic AI – Understanding instructions in human language is difficult for AI. Neuro-symbolic AI combines the transparency offered by symbolic reasoning with the processing power of machine learning, enabling our technology to offer the best implementation time, an explainable AI, and shortest time-to-value.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, on-site search optimization is a great way to help you increase eCommerce revenue, with more than 30% of visitors on an eCommerce site using the on-site search feature. However, it is estimated that 72% of sites have an unsatisfactory internal search engine. Are you part of those 72%? If so, Inbenta Search module can help you boost your eCommerce revenue!

You can even try it for FREE for 14 days or get in touch with us to organize a demo.

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