How to handle unexpected search terms (preferably, automatically)
Have you ever looked at the search terms that your customers are using, and said “well, clearly that’s NOT the right words you should have used!”
Srchy is a product born of more than 60 years of eCommerce experience, because we’ve seen it happen a LOT. Customers search using phrases that make sense in the context of their lives, but that are not the same as the words that the merchandisers use.
Or maybe even they just had a spelling mistake…
At best, a weird search term makes it a bit harder for the customers to find what they want.
At worst, the customer gets back zero search results. The impacts of which are varied:
- the customer assumes you don’t have the product they are searching for, and leaves your site, taking their money with them.
- the customer tries searching again, and maybe they find it this time – however, they’ve gotten exasperated that they had to do additional work to spend money with you. Will that affect their future relationship with you?
- the customer decides to trying browsing through the category or collection pages, hoping to find what they want. If they’re lucky, they’d find it, and be exasperated. If not, they’d leave your site – taking their money with them.
- the customer gets cranky that your site doesn’t have results for the really really really obvious item that they are searching for, and decides to post it on social media. Now they’re sharing their exasperation with you to the world, and you have a potential social media PR issue to handle
What Can You Do?
The obvious answer is to review what search terms your customers are using, and then to “fix” those! Set it up so that the next time a customer searches for one of those search terms, they’re instead redirected to look at the “right” set of things that they are actually searching for.
Next problem though, is “Wait, how long is that going to take?”
It all depends. How many customers do you have searching on your website, and how many of them are using search terms that result in 0 search results? (BTW, if you don’t know the answer to this, you should get in touch with Srchy.)
The steps to accomplish this are:
- Find a search term that is resulting in 0 search results
- Figure out what the customer was actually searching for.
- Setup your eCommerce search engine to “fix” what the customer was searching for
Rinse & repeat for each and every single search term that is giving 0 results.
Wait. You’ve got how many search terms that are giving 0 results?
You’d be looking at that and saying “I can’t afford to spend this time every week fixing these up! If only I could find an automatic way to improve my search results!”
Srchy to the Rescue!
Did you know that search on your ecommerce site is used by ~40% of your visitors?
Your actual online revenue could be even higher than that! As an example, 44% of Readings’ recent online revenue was directly attributed to Srchy’s search results.
But when it becomes too difficult to manage, or there isn’t enough information that enables you to “do the right thing”, or there’s just too much to do to make it work, then ignoring poor search outcomes means that that portion of your online revenue is NOT being optimised and you’re just leaving potential revenue behind!
This is where Srchy comes in. Srchy is all about making it really easy for you – the eCommerce site’s manager – to improve your site’s search outcomes in as automated a manner as possible!
Take for example our latest Smart System: The 0-Search-Results Fixer!
It’d frequently & automatically review the search terms that your customers are using that have given them 0 search results, and suggest fixes that you can approve so that it doesn’t happen again!
Would you like to hear more about how Srchy could help improve your eCommerce site’s success?
