February 22nd , 2016

How Optimizing the “Search Field” Feature Rewards Ecommerce Owners

Ecommerce

Today our generations are more tech-savvy and living the fast-paced life. Therefore, our modern ecommerce shoppers are in search of shortcuts, to do anything on the web, and in real life as well. Therefore, nobody prefers to browse the number of products and categories through the navigation system of a large ecommerce website, as it falls short to reach the intended products quickly. Thus, internal site search proves a handy solution for such tech-savvy ecommerce visitors, as they are accustomed to search engines and their powers and love to use site search feature or field immediately. The affinity of such experienced surfers towards the site search feature always ending with high conversion rate and high ROI in comparison to the rests of the categories of ecommerce visitors. It is because they have familiarity with product names/keywords and sometimes brand names and numbers to obtain quick results. The site search offers shoppers, the shortest loop/path to reach the intended goals and turn them ultimately into the buyers with success. Moreover, good search experiences bring repeat traffic and yield high revenue with less traffic. It ultimately reduces the cost of acquisition of new traffic and ends up with high RIO statistically. Therefore, offering a refined site “search field” may leverage the performance of the ecommerce store for its owners.

How to Optimize the Search Field of the Ecommerce Website

There are numbers of factors need to consider while optimizing the ecommerce search field, but following are prominent to obtain maximum benefits.

Optimizing the Ecommerce Search Field Design

The search field design and placement of the ecommerce store are important factors to offer the excellent search field experiences. After various testing, it has proved that we can optimize the following aspects of the search field of an ecommerce site for optimum results. Search Box Size: The size of the search field plays a vital role in search experiences when the size is not enough to cover the longest standard query or product name. It should be because today we are giving auto suggestions and various filtering options as soon as searcher starts entry of keywords. If the entire text or key phrase is not readable easily, it spoils the user experiences. Search Box Position: Grabbing the immediate attention of the searchers and tempting them to go ahead with site search is the primary aim of the ecommerce designers. Therefore, the right location of the search field, even in the case of responsive designing is daunting. Top of the web page and its middle part is the most prominent place in the search field. Therefore, most of the mobile friendly ecommerce web stores select the middle portion of the top of the page, just above the main navigation menu bar. Placing the search box on the top right of the webpage is a standard practice and following it bring the familiarity and speed up the search field find process. Similarly, position the search field away from other boxes gives clutter free experiences.     Search Box Labels or CTA For the sake of better CTA, chose an appropriate color, border, and text to entice ecommerce visitors to love the search box and use it. For instance, magnify glass icon is now a universal symbol of search and “Find” text is more intuitive than simple “Go.” Search Box Inside Text Tips Light gray colored or fading style texts are common for the sake of guiding tips or examples for the users. Thus, they can know what could be possibilities for the entries of the search queries for beginners as well as first timers. Of course, that texts should disappear as soon as the user puts the mouse cursor inside the search field so the user can freely add own search terms. You can use JavaScript for such functionality.

Optimizing the Ecommerce Search Field Results or Functionality

Obtaining the accurate and relevant search results through optimization of the search field is essential for the sake of better search experiences on the ecommerce website. In due course, expert ecommerce developers integrate the latest 3rd party plugins or search algorithm in the site search modules. We won’t go in-depth, but some brief discussion is appropriate here. Autosuggestions and Auto-Complete Functionality: Just like Google like high-end search engines, in-site search engines are now capable of offering autosuggestions and auto-complete features in the search fields of the ecommerce websites. These features speed up the search process, as it need not enter the entire keyword or search query, just initial letters of the keywords are enough. It also saves users from a misspelling of the search query, as half-written words are completing automatically and saving the minds of searchers from memories the entire spellings. Advanced Search Options: Today ecommerce searches have advanced search features thanks to faceted and filtered search options. The advanced search functionality usually narrow down the search options and shorten the search loops or the entire process in large ecommerce web stores with plenty of products and categories. It is true that the optimization of the search field or on-site search feature enhance the user experiences as well as improve the ecommerce store performance as a whole. If the implementations are not right, it may cause more harm than the good. Therefore, ecommerce experts with enough skills and experiences are mandatory to hire for the field search optimization and other Ecommerce Website Development projects. Fortunately, Addon Solutions is one stop window to provide feasible and affordable ecommerce web development company with advanced search features and optimized search field. No doubt, we had a big list of many other optimization techniques, but we have restrained us up to significant ones and may like to know regarding the much important one that we missed in the comment box below.