A Recap of Magento's Imagine Conference, Part 2

1. Search results reflect a uniform user experience. Consumers expect the same search experience they have on Google, Amazon.com, Facebook, etc. You need to present a consistent user experience on your site, the same type of experience visitors get on other leading sites, including instant search results, suggested results, embedded images, etc. Doing so helps increase visitors’ comfort level and trust factor with your website.
2. Remember that it's site search, not just product search. Depending on where the shopper is in the conversion funnel, you want to serve them search results that meet their particular intent. For example, Carolina Rustica serves product search results with a product tab, a video tab and a "community" tab, which focuses on its social media content that's relevant to the product. This allows visitors to choose what they want to explore, whether it's pricing information, product specifications, relevant videos of the product, or discussions concerning a manufacturer or specific product. Intent drives the search pattern.
3. Use every opportunity to present visitors with merchandising and marketing banners. Carolina Rustica uses banners to promote its unique selling proposition (USP) — quality, free shipping, product expertise — as well as to highlight specific manufacturers. These banners are triggered by keywords used in search. For example, a search for "AICO" (a manufacturer) triggers a banner promoting the best-selling collection by that manufacturer. Similarly, it uses the "no results" search result page to again extoll the brand's USP (via a banner). Carolina Rustica serves up results that best match the no results search query. On that same page, however, it also uses the opportunity to show its most popular searches as well as its best-selling items. Carolina Rustica has taken a dead-end search page and made it into a page full of opportunity to explore.
4. Use the connections in your data to create a rich search experience. Carolina Rustica uses a new Magento extension developed by SLI Systems to create a richer and more relevant search experience. Launched two weeks ago, Learning Search Connect allows for near-instantaneous changes in our product and category database to be reflected in search results. We also plan to use SLI data connectivity to bridge search results between CarolinaRustica.com (on Magento) and FurnitureCrate.com (our sister company, on Yahoo's platform).

Uri Foox from Pixafy, a web development company, had a similar presentation in which he identified "hidden" pages on websites that could be used for promotional messaging or other outreach efforts. These pages include the following: