The Current State Of E-Commerce Search

The Current State Of E-Commerce Search

Advances in the web industry let consumers shop anywhere, anytime. As the ecommerce has evolved tremendously and changed the shopper’s retail approach. From small to large scale industries are now in need of creating a personal ecommerce website that represents their brand and transforms their business. It gives a great opportunity to retailers and manufacturers to create a direct relationship with their consumers.

But to create a successful ecommerce website, you need to focus on some critical aspects of your web design. One of the important key component that contribute a lot in conversion rate is ecommerce onsite search as most of the users prefer searching over clicking categories We have tested ecommerce search experience of 19 major e-commerce websites with real world end users.

In this article, we’ll explore the current state of ecommerce based on large scale usability study.

 16% of e-commerce websites do not support searching by product name or model number, despite those details appearing on the product page!  18% of websites provide no useful results when the user types a single character wrong in the product’s name.  Failing to return relevant products for, say, “blow dryer” if “hair dryer” is typed, or “multifunction printer” if “all-in-one printer” is typed.  60% of e-commerce websites do not support searches with symbols and abbreviations.  82% of e-commerce websites autocomplete suggestions.  92% of the top-50 websites display only one breadcrumb type or none at all. Breadcrumbs are used to ease navigation.

Below, we have presented some ways to improve the search experience and success rate of these ecommerce websites.  It’s important that the search logic broadens the query’s scope and looks for closely related spellings.  Build a keyword synonym logic.  Map all common keywords, symbols, abbreviations and full spellings to each other.  Provide product-specific filters that relate directly to the user’s query.

Keep in mind that the experience and performance on these websites are entirely influenced by non – visible factors such as search logic and product data integration.

We hope, the article will give you all the insights of your ecommerce website design that help you to improve the shopping experience of end users.