How to Make Online Gift Buying a Cinch for Any Occasion

Online shoppers faced with buying a gift often don't know what they want to buy until they see a product that catches their fancy. That presents a challenge for online retailers, who must present shoppers with the right mix of products without knowing what they'll jump at. A variety of search and navigation tools can help guide your customers through the process of looking for a gift and zeroing in on the best options. Your job is to make this process as fast and easy and possible; consumers don't have time for endless, random browsing.

In my work with online retailers, one of the best tools I've found for a user-friendly gift-buying experience is a gift finder, which offers visitors several choices relating to the type of gift and/or the recipient to help them find the desired item. For example, you can ask shoppers about the age and gender of the recipient, the occasion (e.g., wedding, birthday), and price. They are then presented a well-defined group of products to choose from.

Outside of gift finders, you can also use a well-thought-out series of refinements, tailored to your product selection. In addition to the choices you might include in a gift finder as mentioned above, refinements for color, stock availability and type of recipient all help keep the gift search from being too overwhelming. In fact, many online retailers add a "Gifts" tab to the top-level navigation menu on their site, letting shoppers head there first to start their search.

As you move into popular gift-giving seasons like graduation or Christmas, it's a good time to take a closer look at site search analytics to see what gifts your customers may be thinking of buying — and to make sure you have such items in stock. Look closely at search keywords and refinements that are most frequently clicked on by your visitors. Are they giving you hints about brands you need to carry or product variations that are proving popular?

Once you uncover any new trends during gift-giving season — or if you recognize that your customers are ready to start their seasonal shopping — you can get visitors’ attention with merchandising that's tied into your site search. For example, you can create customized landing pages that visitors see when they arrive on your site from a search engine. You can also create banner ads that relate to a visitor's search. They can appear on search results pages promoting similar products or special deals like free shopping and gift-wrap.

Attractive images also help gift shoppers decide if a product is right for the recipient. Offer easy ways for shoppers to see a product even before they get to the product page. You can use quick-view windows that pop up when visitors mouse over a search result (these windows can include a photo plus a short description) or a video icon next to the search result that gives them an up-close view more easily.

Along with images, information like product ratings and reviews can boost a shopper's confidence in their gift choice. They key is to make this information searchable so that shoppers see it as they're perusing search results. Such information can encourage them to dig deeper into product choices when they know there's some third-party validation at hand.

Blog posts, product reviews, social networking posts and videos can all be indexed in search results to help gift buyers make their decisions. It's especially helpful if you allow visitors to view search results that are tabbed by the type of content — e.g., videos, reviews, etc. — so that they can easily navigate to the type of content they want to read or view.

Naturally, you'll want to incorporate as many of the ideas above into your mobile site as well in order to make gift buying a cinch for shoppers on the go. No matter whether they're browsing via a smartphone or desktop, gift buyers everywhere have one goal in mind — getting someone a perfect present without hours of hassle. Your website should offer this headache-free gift-shopping environment.

Terry Costa is the vice president of marketing at SLI Systems, a provider of on-demand site search software.