hannamyluv - 1:04 am on Aug 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

The real problem with search is the user. And that is just not an option for blame with ecomm.

Most people are too impatient to use categories. That works fine is you carry a 100 or so products but the more you have, the less likely a customer will spend the time scolling through categories.

Search engines (the big ones, not site ones) have trained people to think that search is easy and quick. So they assume that all are easy and quick.

Take away search or try to hide it, and I bet you will lose sales.

Your best bet, if you have a lot of products is to start to build a database. Get a programer to write up an add on to your search that allows you to redirect searches. Have someone go through the analytics and once a week add in the words that had no results. Using the example above, write your search so that if they search for "baseballs", it looks for baseball. If your seach checker sees that someone searched for "base bal", add that to the mix. Someone types "white ball with red stiches" redirect them to baseball.

You don't catch the first one, but you just took care of anyone later.

Yes, it is time consuming, but eventually you can build up a decent database that is custom designed for your site and customers. Which is something that no off the shelf system could give you.