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.

 

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.