The standard website has a lot of support pages: shipping information, order tracking, customer support, return policy, contact information, “About us” page, the FAQ section, and so on.
While links to support pages are often added in the headers and footers, shoppers may not always be inclined to scrolling and scanning the page just to find one measly link. Many will often opt for the search bar because it’s more convenient.
We’ve grown accustomed to using Google to find information online and that mentality is taken everywhere. Anything that can’t be found via search might as well not exist.
Redirect
When users come in searching for Returns, Shipping, Order Tracking, and such, don’t give them a list of search results, just redirect them to the relevant page. It saves your shoppers one more unnecessary click and leaves them a little wowed by your efficiency.
Adidas
When you type in “returns” for example, it automatically redirects to the Returns page.
The problem though is that it first shows the search results page with no results and after a couple of seconds it does the redirect. It would be a better user experience to direct visitors directly to the returns page as a result of the ‘returns’ search term, and not show the search results page in-between.
Alternatively…
Instead of instantly redirecting to the relevant page (e.g. Returns), it could be shown as the first element in the search results page (or even in the search suggestion panel), and letting the user decide to open that Returns page or not.