23 Jun, 2015On-site Search in eCommerce – Review of the 8 Leading Retailers Selling in Canada
How many clicks to find a pot of gold? The search for the elusive red kettle
We all obsess about search engine marketing and search engine optimization, but we often don’t pay appropriate attention to the on-site search in e-commerce. You practically waste your time and money by spending on advertising to drive traffic to the store if the visitors cannot find an available product easily. It is similar to a physical store that is fully stocked, but no one knows how to find where the products on the shelves are. Onsite search helps put products on virtual shelves in a clear and organized manner.
The on-site search is the small box usually found at the top of the page that lets a user type in what they want to find. It is similar to Google but is limited only to the site that the user is on.
About 30% of e-commerce visitors use on-site search, and they tend to be in a much more advanced stage in the purchase process than someone who just wanders through the site navigation. In fact, visitors using site search are twice more likely to convert than those that don’t. (1)
MAKE INFORMATION EASY TO FIND
76% of customers say the most important factor in a website’s design is “the website makes it easy for me to find what I want” (2)
Visitors converted at 4.63% versus the websites’ average of 2.77%, which is 1.8 times more effective. Consequently, visitors using search contributed 13.8% of the revenues.(3)
Online search is a really old functionality that remains untamable. Having a good search is one of the most important featured to optimize on your site. It is not a mystery but requires time and effort. If you have to choose to improve only one thing on your site, then you should optimize your search.
This brief study is reviewing the on-site search of the following eCommerce retailers: Amazon, Sears, Walmart, Bed Bath and Beyond, The Bay, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, and Kitchen Stuff Plus
We did a quick study of the current state of the on-site search at the 8 leading retail brands that sell online in Canada. We did a simple experiment to test the search functionality.
I started looking for a red kettle and then tried to narrow my search:
My search criteria are:
- Electric Kettle
- Red
- 7L
- Under $75 dollars
- Reviews-nice to have
Below are the screenshots of the search results pages for each of the 8 brands.
Bed Bath and Beyond – Bedbathandbeyond.ca
Hudson’s Bay – TheBay.com
Canadian Tire – canadiantire.ca
Best Buy – bestbuy.ca
Kitchen Stuff Plus – kitchenstuffplus.com
Definition for evaluation
Number of results – number of results that gets returned on the page is reasonable and clearly visible, allows to be narrowed further.
Reviews – available right on the search page and most products have reviews
Filters – clear filters that allow narrowing down the search to desired outcome
Relevancy – results that get returned are relevant to the search terms entered
Box Placement – prominent location, even on mobile
Speed – page loads within seconds
Auto Complete –when you start typing the search box stars populating suggestions, similar to Google
Correction – provide results close to the misspelled entry. For example, entering “kettle” will return results for kettles
Results Page Quality – easy to understand results that properly displayed, if no results the page provides suggestion on how to improve search term
| Criteria | Amazon | Sears | Walmart | Bed Bath and Beyond | The Bay | Canadian Tire | Best buy | Kitchen Stuff Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Number of results | 9 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 2 |
| 2 | Reviews | 9 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| 3 | Filters | 6 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 3 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| 4 | Relevancy | 10 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 0 |
| 5 | Box Placement | 9 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 4 | 9 | 9 | 3 |
| 6 | Speed | 9 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 7 | 8 | 6 |
| 7 | Auto Complete | 8 | 9 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 5 |
| 8 | Correction | 10 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 8 | 6 |
| 9 | Results Page quality | 6 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
| 10 | Navigation | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 6 |
| Final Mark | 8.3 | 6.4 | 6.3 | 7.4 | 3.9 | 6.3 | 7.8 | 4.5 |
| Points | Legend |
|---|---|
| 0 | Worst |
| 1 | Very Poor |
| 2 | Poor |
| 3 | Significantly below average |
| 4 | Below Average |
| 5 | Average |
| 6 | Above Average |
| 7 | Significantly above average |
| 8 | Good |
| 9 | Very Good |
| 10 | Best |
Innovative Findings
Bed Bath and Beyond
Auto-complete shows popular categories
Sears
Very nice visual display of categories headings
Canadian Tire
Very prominent search box with big and very visible auto-suggestion results
Conclusion
Here are some of the recommendations to consider when you implement the on-site search in eCommerce.
- Use analytics to determine which search terms are most commonly used and what words are being misspelled and redirect them to the right pages
- Test the on-site search engine for relevancy. Do not show jewelry when people look for kettles
- Use examples and auto completion
- Try and avoid the page with 0 results. If the page returns no results for whatever reason include tips and suggestion to improving search results
- Make sure there is enough product information once the search results are returned
- Make sure that product images are clear when visible in small scale
- Make sure that product pages are optimized and contain all the necessary information to make a purchase. (improving search without fixing the product pages is not enough to promote sales)
- Consider to use a more intelligent search engine that utilizes the natural language processing if you have a large catalog of many product categories and variants. This approach would help to avoid a situation when a shopper types “organic baby food” and gets in return all the baby products, all the organic products, and all the food products.
Let search be easy, fast and relevant!
