E-commerce: Four Strategies to Successful ‘Searchandising’ On Your Site

Many of the most successful Web marketers use site search applications known as “searchandising,” which customizes their search and navigation with merchandising. A new research report from Aberdeen Group for e-commerce software provider Mercado Software shows that online retailers that use searchandising tools can boost sales, conversion rates and average order values.

Here are four tips from the report, “Web Site Search: Revenue in the Results,” to help catalogers and other online marketers achieve the best results possible using searchandising applications.

1. Customize, it pays off. A whopping 86 percent of companies who achieved moderate to extensive customization to fit their products or services got the highest returns from their Web site search applications.

2. Make continuous improvements. Nearly 60 percent of those responding to the survey said they saw benefits — such as improved customer satisfaction and streamlined processes — to the ongoing fine-tuning of the search and navigation process.

3. Search tools should be customer-friendly. Realize that people are bound to spell words wrong or make other mistakes while using a search application. Your search tools should use natural language processing, can recognize misspelled words and include a customized dictionary and thesaurus, the report says. Otherwise, you could be losing sales when a search comes up empty.

4. Mine your site for data on your customers. You can learn a lot about your customers’ browsing preferences, buying habits and other patterns by analyzing their Web searches on your site, the report state. Use that information when you’re fine-tuning your search applications.

For a free copy of the report, go to www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410627&cid=3910