Forum Moderators: buckworks
The big buzzword from the Internet Retailer Web Design '08 conference this past week in Miami. From a google search of this website it has only ever been mentioned once. I found that extremely odd considering how savvy this place usually is.
Have to admit, it was a new concept to me.
Anyone else hearing about this term and concept?
Are you sure it isn't a new label on an old technique? A quick search on G for it yielded only 4700 SERPs. What is your understanding of it?
Providing in-site search results to convert to sales. That means providing relavant results everytime somebody searches your site for a product and giving them enough information on the search results page to trigger a sale.
Many sites treat the search mechanism as an after thought. When it is an opportunity to close a sale.
I saw wonderful examples of in-site search and techniques to improve search. There were reports of increasing conversions by 30%. There are also reports of some people using their in-site search as the landing page for adwords click thrus.
Completely opened my eyes to a missed opportunity. If a visitor to your site is taking to time to search your site with the tool you provide, you have an opportunity to close a sale.
Perhaps they've learned that most search forms work terribly (many I've seen are simply broken).
Hey, this is MY opportunity to coin my own buzzword and give seminars on DRILL-andising
But most visitors to MOST smaller sites don't navigate via the search form. They shop by drilling down thru links.
Well, that was my opinion before last week. Even on a site with a 50 products people are using the search function. Its turned into a habit. When looking at your site they have no idea if you are offering 10 products or 10 thousand. So to save time surfers are increasingly using your search box out of habit. Instead of drilling down.
The stats that were being presented were eye opening.
A really great commercial search utility isn't cheap, as far as I know. I looked at a nice one that leased for about $500 a month. And I don't want one that feeds other ads or links outside our site.
Im sure a site selling zillions of books or electronic parts needs a good search, but many of us may be better off simplifying/polishing our link navigation.
One of the things you want to do, is capture what people are typing into your search box. To find out if they are finding what they are looking for and also finding out what they are expecting to find on your site.
We capture all searches and results returned. Have added a few new products when searches show demand. We just gained that ability a year or two ago, but I think it's been common among the big boys for years.
Re: expensive paid services:
If you have a site search engine, then you should have plenty of data available to you. The next step is simple to get a programmer to write a glue app that draws from that data to achieve the goal.
I'd also think twice about using a service simple because you're giving up your keyword data to them. Maybe just my hang up though.
It is also about using your search results page as a marketing tool. The information you display, the way you display it, allowing the user to refine the results, reducing the number of null results over time etc.
I heard reports of some people using their search page as the landing page for Adwords ads. It has to suit the industry you are in obviously.
Yes. That's what I meant (too). Building custom pages based on the keywords used for the search and the products you have to offer. Also, building a notification system for keyword searches that reach a certain threshold for products you may or may not carry. If you carry red widgets and get notice that your users have searched for blue widgets 100+ times in the past week, you might want to know about it.
For many decades, conventional shopping malls tabulated customer "searches" at their little information booths. If XYZ Mall had a lot of shoppers asking where the candy store was, XYZ would contact candy chains about opening there. I've seen such lists and they're very interesting.
Department store info booths probably recorded
"searches" 150 years ago.
If you carry red widgets and get notice that your users have searched for blue widgets 100+ times in the past week, you might want to know about it.
That is right. Its something we have completely overlooked and I wonder how much we have missed.
"Hey! where da blue widgets? All I see are red ones."
All customer comments should be CC'd to the CEO. Good financial auditing practice too.
We encourage all customers to supply comments about our products and our site, including the ordering process. About 10-20% type in something. Once had a VP of Microsoft give us a few tips!
