Holiday Countdown Tip #3: Analytics to act on now – on-site search logs

While data and results from the holidays are still weeks away from complete, there is valuable analytics information to be gleaned — and acted on — right now: your on-site search logs.

Making small changes to enable more efficient searching during the holidays can have a potentially large impact. Data from the MarketLive Performance Index shows that fully one-third of all eCommerce site visits include an internal search — and those shoppers who use internal search tend to make purchases at a significantly higher rate than other visitors. According to the index, the conversion rate for on-site search was 7.09% for the second quarter of 2011, nearly 39% higher than the overall average conversion rate.

To improve the efficiency of search, look out for:

  • “Zero results” terms. Add verbiage to product copy to produce a match, or offer alternatives or a redirect to help shoppers connect with the right products; tweak your search tool to correct for misspellings and typos.
  • Most-frequently-used terms. Ensure that the most frequently-searched terms give shoppers enough results by adjusting product copy. If your search functionality allows it, automatically suggest categories to browse in addition to offering a results set of individual items.
  • Holiday concepts. Find a way to connect shoppers with relevant products even if they search for abstract concepts like “holiday sale” or “gifts for her.” Toys R Us redirects searches for “stocking stuffers” to the category of gifts under $10 — a quick solution that avoids having to adjust copy for thousands of items, but gives shoppers plenty of options likely to suit their needs.

Example of search redirect from Toys R Us

 
To view all the tips in this series, visit the Holiday Tips section of the MarketLive blog:
https://marketlive-blog.com/tag/2011-holiday-countdown-tips/

And be sure to subscribe to marketlive-blog.com for year-round best practices, trend-watching, performance data and more.

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