As they click into the search box… a good practice is to show their previous search history, and possibly popular searches.   As they start typing… You can show suggested searches, categories, and/or products.   Mispellings The auto-suggestions and results should account for common misspellings. For example, if they type ‘dreses’ it should suggest results […]

The amount of time people spend considering a purchase is often proportional to the cost of the item in question. The same customer who may spend hours reading the spec sheet of a thousand-dollar smartphone and doing price comparisons won’t devote as much time to a five-dollar screen protector or back cover. Because of this, […]

For stores with 50+ products Having either a category filter (when searching) or search filters in the results page is especially important for stores with over 50 products or so. Some searches can be incredibly broad. A simple one-word search like dress or computer can return hundreds and possibly thousands of results on your standard […]

If a user searches for a product your store doesn’t have, showing an empty page is the worst thing you could possibly do. It leads them nowhere and causes frustration. Frustration can make them bounce from your store. Include some of the following components Alternate products similar to one searched for Category suggestions based on […]

Window shopping Customers don’t end up buying every single time they visit your store. More often than not, they come in, look around, and for any number of reasons leave without making a purchase. In most cases, they’re just window-shopping, if browsing products on an e-commerce store can be called that. Sometimes, they may be […]

Search expectations 72% of ecommerce sites fail to meet search expectations and returning irrelevant search results is where many of them go wrong. Unless a user is specifically looking for a page such as your returns policy or one of your categories, then they’re looking for a product.   Most searches are for a product […]

When you use Google, you almost always find relevant results for your search query. There are a lot of things going on in the background that make Google results so uncannily accurate but the average shopper doesn’t spend any time thinking about this. They bring their search results expectations from Google to your site and […]

Search is an indispensable part of the ecommerce shopping experience yet it can be a leading cause of frustration if implemented improperly. The biggest cause for concern with searches on most sites is the fact that they’re too broad. You search for a red jacket and get 200+ results. This disappointment is a direct result […]

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 […]

Search is the most important site navigation feature. Therefore, showing both the search query and the total number of search results goes a long way in improving the search experience for your customers.   Why persisting the search query is important Sometimes people can get distracted. If someone turns back to their phone or computer […]