Increasing Conversion with Site Search

Answer

Continuously monitoring and refining site search tools holds the potential to dramatically increase usage conversion and customer satisfaction.?IBM Digital Analytics leverages a best-practices conversion approach to help merchandisers site directors and site designers to understand and identify bottlenecks in the search conversion funnel and make adjustments quickly to capitalize on customer intent.

Search users can be grouped by conversion point for the purposes of analysis. The Site Search Conversion Framework is as follows:
? Searcher ? Visitors that enter a term into a search box and initiate a search.
? Search Browser ? Visitors that click on a search result to view a product.
? Search Prospect ? Visitors who have added a product to their market basket as a result of a search.
? Search Customer ? Visitors that have completed a transaction as a result of a search.

Leveraging the Site Search Conversion Framework merchandisers and site designers can identify opportunities for optimization of site search and address bottlenecks in the conversion process through targeted analysis and recommendations. The Site Search Conversion Framework and accompanying areas for opportunity are outlined below in Figure 5.0.

Business Owners
Responsibility for monitoring site search effectiveness should be held by site designers and merchants responsible for search design and placement of product within the site. Measurable goals should be set for conversion effectiveness and shared across teams and functions. Changes in conversion results should be investigated based on the Site Search Conversion Framework. When possible analysts should take advantage of industry benchmark data to validate that their performance is in line with or greater than the performance of a representative peer group.

Best Practices
IBM Digital Analytics?presents several best practices for increasing conversion with site search including:
? Monitoring Site Search Effectiveness ? Create a baseline of current usage and value for comparison to future effectiveness after implementing changes.
? Improving Site Search Design ? Analyze the location function site integration and ease of use of the search input mechanism and results pages to increase usage and usability.
? Reducing Unsuccessful Queries ? Analyze common searches that return no results to identify opportunities to increase conversion.
? Increasing Results Relevance ? Analyze the relevance of results for top searches to identify opportunities to increase conversion.
? Benchmarking Site Search Performance ? Understand how your search effectiveness compares to industry peers.

5.1 Monitoring Site Search Effectiveness

Goal
The goal of measuring site search effectiveness is to set a baseline for search usage and impact for ongoing comparison to future time periods. To do so you may want to create a performance index specific to your business. This allows for consistent internal benchmarking of site search performance.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following reports:
? Top Line Summary
? Segmentation Workbench (Segment on search results pages to identify user and buyer population measurements)
? On-Site Search Intelligence

Steps
1. Obtain the site-wide number of sessions unique visitors unique customers as well as order bookings applications or revenue data.
2. Obtain the same data specifically for the segment of site visitors that represent search users.
3. Present data side-by-side creating calculations for customer conversion rates as well as any other key performance indicators that are applicable to your business.
4. Set targets for conversion effectiveness based on historical performance.
5. Monitor conversion on an ongoing basis to identify trends in site search effectiveness and to assess opportunity for improvement.

Actions
Because this analysis focuses on delivering a baseline understanding of search users a majority of the insight is for use in comparison to future time periods.
? Changes in percentage of Visitors Buyers Revenue and such resulting from search ? These metrics are used to understand the overall impact of changes to search visibility usability and effectiveness.
? Changes in percentage of Sessions Using Search percentage of Unique Visitors Using Search ? These metrics are used to understand impact of search visibility improvements or design integration.
? Changes in the Customer/Visitor Conversion ratio ? These metrics are used to understand the impact of changes to search results relevance and presentation.
? Key Performance Index ? Analysts can set a performance index that is specific to their business. In this instance the KPI is Revenue per Visitor for All Searchers divided by the same metric for All Visitors. This example shows that searchers deliver 55% more revenue per visitor than typical site users. [

5.2 Improving Site Search Design

Goal
Analyze the location function site integration and ease of use of the search-input mechanism and results pages to increase search usage and usability.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following report:
?? Clickstream

Steps
1. Identify the Search Results page on your site.
2. Create a Clickstream report to view the paths of visitors to the Search Results page.
3. Classify traffic into Home Category and Product pages taking note of category breakdown.
4. Create a Clickstream report to view the paths of visitors from the Search Results page.
5. Classify traffic by site departure second search viewed additional results moved forward to product page (desired result) and other.

Actions
For the paths ?to? the search results page site designers should analyze the following:
? Low rates of search from home page ? Check to ensure that callouts and search functionality are clearly visible for visitors to the home page.
? Low rates of search from Category and Product pages ? Check to ensure that callouts and search functionality are clearly visible throughout the site.
? Disproportionate number of searches from a category ? Compare search traffic breakdown by category to overall breakdown of site traffic by category to identify categories in which customers have difficulty finding product. Investigate category pages and merchandising choices to determine root cause.

For the paths ?from? the search results page site designers should analyze the following:
? High rates of second searches ? If not available already consider adding filtering/query refinement technology to your site to allow visitors to refine their searches without needing to enter a new query.
? High rates of site departure ? This indicates that unsuccessful search results were confusing causing visitors to depart. Investigate the Search Results page design. Ensure that this page provides clear instructions for refining queries in the case that a visitor did not receive results. You also should consider analyzing and improving results relevance to reduce departure.
? High rates of abandonment to the home page ? This indicates that visitors did not find the information they were seeking via search and departed the channel to search for it on their own. Analyze results relevance to understand and improve search engine effectiveness.

5.3 Reducing Unsuccessful Queries

Goal
The goal of this analysis is to identify popular search terms that return no search results to users. By identifying these terms and tuning your site search engine to return results you can drive incremental revenue and customer satisfaction.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following report:
? On-Site Search Intelligence

Steps
1. Identify site-wide average for applications bookings orders or revenues per search.
2. Sort search-term performance by number of results returned.
3. Identify top searches with no results returned based on number of search sessions.
4. Calculate the potential value from ensuring that these search terms return results. Assume that an increase in conversion would result in the customer converting at an average rate.

Actions
To reduce unsuccessful queries merchants should consider the following options:
? For zero-search-results terms that correspond to available product ? Populate the search engine results page with the appropriate products and descriptions to meet visitor needs.
? For zero-search-results terms that do not correspond to available product ? Depending on the magnitude of customer interest and its alignment with brand goals consider adding this product to your online offering.

5.4 Increasing Results Relevance

Goal
The goal of this analysis is to understand the effectiveness of product placement within the search results pages for popular searches. By improving results relevance merchandisers can increase conversion.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following reports:
? Home page (Screen Resolution Report) or System Report (Top Monitor Resolutions)
? On-Site Search Intelligence
? On-Site Search Zoom

Steps
1. Identify where the ?fold? is for a typical Search Results page and how many products are displayed above the fold. For more information on how to identify the ?fold? for a page see Appendix A.
2. Identify the most valuable site search terms based on sessions searched conversion or revenue effectiveness.
3. For each term zoom to identify the seven top selling items.
4. Identify whether each item was: 1) Above the fold on the first page of results; 2) Below the fold on the first page of results; or 3) Does not appear on the first search result page.
5. Classify all items accordingly as effectively placed moderately effectively placed or ineffectively placed and summarize this data by term.

Actions
Merchants and site directors should consider the following to increase search results relevance:
? For moderately effectively and ineffectively placed products ? The thumbnails for these items should move up in the search results rankings preferably to the first page and above the fold.

5.5 Benchmarking Site Search Performance

Goal
The goal of benchmarking is to understand whether the usability of site search is comparable to industry peers. If not merchandising managers and site designers should consider investing in search technology resources or process improvement.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following report:
? LIVEmark

Steps
1. Determine a review time period sufficiently long to be representative of typical visitor behavior despite seasonal or promotional fluctuations (monthly or quarterly recommended).
2. Identify site search metrics in the LIVEmark report.
3. Compare site search performance to LIVEmark Sub-Vertical if applicable or LIVEmark Retail if not.
4. Assess need for search investment.

Actions
The action taken will depend on which conversion points are underperforming relative to the index.
? On-Site Search Session percentage difference is negative ? Evaluate how visible and integrated your search engine is in site design. Ensure that users can easily find and understand your search feature throughout the site.
? On-Site Search Conversion percentage difference is negative ? Evaluate and improve results for queries with zero results and popular queries with poor results relevance. Consider investment in packaged search solutions depending on magnitude of difference and importance of search to your business.