Delight Customers with An Intelligent Product Search Engine
Search is a critical component of the online shopping experience. While less than 10% of users perform searches on eCommerce websites, these searchers account for approximately 40% of total revenue.
This means consumers who perform searches are coming to your website with a specific purchase in mind. They likely know what they want and are ready to buy. So why make that process more difficult?
Consumers need to conveniently navigate through the options and find what they are looking for—but not all product search engines are created the same. An intelligent search and discovery engine uses keyword data, customer profiles, and business rules to find exactly what your customers are looking for as quickly as possible.
Enhance the Discovery Experience With AI
Today the best search engines are backed by artificial intelligence (AI). AI works to gain deeper insights into customer searches and ultimately deliver better results. Through AI, search tools can optimize results to be personalized and improve in-site recommendations based on consumer buyer patterns.
Quality AI search can react to constantly changing consumer intent and search terms. Consider this example: if an influencer suddenly starts referring to a jumpsuit as a “spacesuit,” consumers will flock to your site and start searching for spacesuits.
A good eCommerce search engine will use AI to react and help users with their search by displaying relevant search outputs.
Invest in the Necessary Search and Discovery Capabilities
A quality AI search comprises a few necessary capabilities: query completion, related searches, and related products.
Query completion fills in the search result without the user having to type every single word.
With related searches, when a user doesn’t know what they are looking for, AI makes suggestions based on the user’s initial keywords. These suggestions help users efficiently narrow down their search quickly.
Related product functionality suggests related products or information based on a user’s initial search. This not only helps the users find what they need but can also improve engagement.
Key Ecommerce Metrics You Can Boost With a Search Engine
Personalized and intelligent product search offers the benefit of understanding buyer behavior based on the search and delighting the customer by helping them to find products easier and faster.
A search engine can also improve relevancy, reduce hidden inventory and increase engagement with search enhancements.
Additional benefits can include:
- Quickly and relevantly connecting customers to their needs
- Improved user experiences
- Reduced bounce rate
- Higher conversions
- Giving users a better understanding of products, services, or content
- Valuable analytics data to help businesses understand customers and optimize results
- Advanced merchandising functionality
- Optimizations to make mobile searching easier
- Powerful A/B testing to ensure results are as relevant as possible
Ensure You Have the Right Discovery and Search Tools
Just like not every search engine is the same, the tools offered can also widely vary. When choosing your search engine, it is important to define what level of involvement you can commit to and evaluate your and your customers’ real-world needs. The right tools should relieve your current workload, not add additional burden.
Monetate’s eCommerce search engine, Personalized Search, combines four tools based on behavioral outcomes rather than just test analysis. Search results are the result of all the data a company has on each site visitor, generating maximum customer engagement.
The first tool, Predictive Visual Search, displays instant visual results, based on behavioral outcomes, as visitors type partial or full search terms. Sometimes referred to as ‘type ahead,’ instant images are displayed as a visitor types, and as shoppers hover over suggestions, the recommendations will dynamically change.
Personalized Category Pages analyze in-session behavior and can sort the product grid on category or sub-category pages for each visitor. The feature allows users to refine results with size, color, or any other facets of a product category. This tool helps support campaigns and business priorities by boosting or burying products.
With Site Search, users can deliver hyper-relevant results by personalizing the search experience for each visitor. The tool understands typos and synonyms and offers reporting rich with customer data to feed into a wider personalization program.
The final tool, Product Finder, engages shoppers by asking questions, capturing explicit insights, and then helping them narrow down options to those that best fit their needs, all based on their answers and preferences. This data can also be fed into other targeted experiences.
Want to see Monetate Personalized Search in action? Talk to one of our Personalization Experts to see how our intelligent product search engine can help you deliver the best results to your site visitors.
