Some of the best data to pay attention when it comes to merchandising involves what your customers are searching for. It’s easy to pay attention to what’s in their carts when they check out or how much their average spend is… however the true potential for increasing sales comes from what they’re not finding (read: what they’re searching for).
Looking at queries
The most important thing to look at is your top search queries. These are the products your customers are actively looking for, making them valuable items to merchandise. More than just pulling these products out and placing them front and center, however, it’s important to observe the semantics of how people are asking for these items:
- Are people searching for a brand name instead of a generic product?
- Ex: Nike Running Shoes vs. running shoes
- Are people searching for a variation on a product?
- Ex: 256GB Flash Drive instead of flash drive
- Are there qualifiers in top search terms?
- Ex: Backpacks on Sale or Clearance Shirts
Paying attention to what people are looking for means paying attention to both the direct and indirect questions they’re asking your search bar. Being able to pinpoint specific products with sales opportunity is great—being able to leverage shopper habits is even better.
Merchandising based on data
When you know what your customers are looking for, there are more than a few ways to bring it to them. You can pin products to the front page of your ecommerce, create an email campaign with top-ranked search products, offer promos for certain items, and so on. And while these are all viable options, they’re not always sustainably effective.
A smarter option for merchandising in many cases is to take a more passive approach. Leverage more than just your search data: leverage your site search function itself! Some smart ways to optimize your site search function into a sales search function include:
- Create merchandising landing pages that customers are automatically redirected to when they search for a particular product. This can sweep brand name searches into a landing page with applicable results specific to that brand, or qualify sale items in specific promo searches, for example.
- Have your search function display top-selling products or a selection of highly-specific products based on search intent, to boost peripheral sales or connect customers to products faster.
- Redefine or refine attributes on products to help lesser-found products show up in searches. This can unearth high-volume search products from deep within category hierarchies.
No matter how you merchandise through your site search function, understand that results are driven using data that’s captured and cultivated from your customers. Nowhere else will you get a data segment that’s so reliable!
Improve your selling capabilities
Using site search data to better merchandise your products means selling smarter, with less guesswork. Take a long look at your site search data and see where you’re missing conversions or losing sales, and take specific action to make sure these queries are becoming conversions.
Celebros is here to offer you a robust set of site search capabilities, designed to improve merchandising and bolster conversions. Take Celebros out for a spin on Magento 1 or 2 and see why we’re Magento's Premier Partner for Site Search and undisputed leader for site search technology. Schedule your demo today!
