Shoppers Are Searching … But Are They Finding? Why Improved Search Impacts Revenue

For retailers today, getting e-commerce search right is a big deal — one that’s directly tied to revenue.

I recently spoke with an executive at a home improvement company who drove this point home. Search had been a point of frustration for its shoppers: They would search for a term like “painter’s tape” but wouldn’t get useful results returned.

So, the shopper refined their search — trying, for example, “10 mm blue painter’s tape.” However, the experience devolved from there. The keyword-based engine would latch on to the measurement and color keywords … deeming 10-millimeter spanner wrenches (some of which were blue) relevant. No thanks! And no surprise, shoppers tended to bounce.

Too many e-commerce search engines today operate like this: grabbing keywords, optimizing for basic relevance, and spitting back results that don’t serve consumers or retailers well.

The Power of Attractiveness

My company Constructor recently did a study on the impact of moving from merely “relevant” search results to “attractive” ones. Here’s what we mean by attractive results: ones that not only interpret keywords, but also consider an individual shopper’s context, history and preferences; product performance data; inventory; product and regional seasonality; and so on.

In other words, attractive results are things the shopper is highly probable to buy.

The impact was clear:

Related story: Survey Says: Shoppers Interested in GenAI for Better Product Discovery

• Better engagement: Highly attractive results (those closely optimized for conversion) have nearly double the clickthrough rate of those with low attractiveness.
• Measurable gains: For every 1-point increase in a search result’s attractiveness, clickthrough rates climb by almost 4 percent. (We use a proprietary scale to measure degrees of attractiveness based on a result’s probability to convert.)

Why This Matters

So, is optimizing search experiences worth it? You bet. The data also showed that searchers are e-commerce’s power buyers — a population with an outsized impact on revenue. Consider the following:

• searchers make up 24 percent of traffic on e-commerce sites …
• but they drive 44 percent of site revenue!
• In some retail sectors, this is even more dramatic: health and beauty sites get 57 percent of their revenue from searchers; general merchandise sites get 61 percent.

Searchers also have an add-to-cart rate of 33 percent (vs. 19 percent for their browsing-only counterparts) and generate 45 percent of sites’ add-to-cart activity. Plus, they convert at 2.5X the rate of non-searchers — driving 42 percent of e-commerce conversions.

With searchers already primed to buy, a clunky experience leaves conversions on the table. In contrast, by displaying spot-on results, retailers can capitalize on searchers’ intent and help them complete their purchase journeys.

Time for a Change

Not all search experiences are created equal, of course — and just having a search engine doesn’t guarantee a sale.

In fact, seven in 10 shoppers today are clamoring for an upgrade to search functionality. Wading through extraneous results takes too long, and 41 percent say they have to “frequently” or “always” rephrase their queries to get the engine to understand.

For retailers that effectively tackle these issues, greater engagement, sales and loyalty will follow.

Because searchers are a high-intent, high-value population, making incremental changes to better serve them is a win-win for shoppers and retailers alike. These changes could include implementing personalization; better optimizing results for attractiveness; and (for more advanced and tech-forward retailers) tapping generative artificial intelligence-based innovations, such as AI shopping assistants, that alleviate indecision and improve product discovery.

Retailers seeking to better serve shoppers don’t have to search far; it’s time to look toward the search bar.

Nate Roy is strategic director of e-commerce innovation at Constructor, a leader in e-commerce search and product discovery.