Product search
Flexible, refinable and effective product search is essential for successful ecommerce solutions to produce a great site.
Users need to be able to fi nd what they want, examine your products in detail and compare them with other products easily.
They need to be able to narrow and broaden their searches, sort them as they choose and see their results at a glance.
If a user can’t do all this, they may well search elsewhere.
3.1 Search functionality
Providing an easy to find and easy to use search box is crucial, especially for retail websites that feature a large range of products.
However, it’s important to provide additional options above and beyond standard search functionality.
If nothing else, your search engine should allow for the following:
* Free keyword search
* Refineable search
* The ability to add or remove filters without starting over
Average score: 46 out of 63 = 73%
High flyers: Marks and Spencer, hmv.com, Asda, Amazon.co.uk
Unsurprisingly, it was the retailers selling a wide variety of products that scored particularly well here, but it would be wrong for any retailer to become complacent with basic search functionality.
Many web users are pretty good at using advanced search options (think of the possible search options that Google now provides) and so are entitiled to expect the same standard elsewhere.
Every retailer included free-text search on their website and 85% gave the option to refine search results using filters.
However, only 55% gave the option to add or remove further filters.
This is particularly important as many web users don’t get their search right first time.
They will often need - and want – to refine and improve search queries to find exactly what they are looking for.
Few retailers included advanced sorting options with only a minority including the ability to sort by features or user rating (both 35%), best-selling (20%) or newest to oldest (15%).
Only 25% gave the option to view all search results on one page.
Best practice guidelines
* Make sure the search box and search options are prominent on every page
* Enable users to add or remove fi lters during their search, without having to use the back button
* Include thumbnails of product images in search results pages to encourage click-throughs
* Where feasible, allow users to view all their search results on one page without having to click forward through separate pages
* Enable users to sort their search results by relevant criteria (e.g. price, user rating, bestselling, best match)
Top Tip
* If your out of the box site search isn’t powerful enough then consider outsourcing search to one of the many third parties who can do this for you.
However be aware, they don’t come cheap, but there are ecommerce solutions out there that offer it in as part of their core system!
So make sure you have the traffic and revenue to support it.
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