In our digital and online world today, users expect relevant, almost instant results, site search needs to be more than just a plain search bar. Your website’s site searches and its data are fundamental to not improve your website itself, but also is the key to boost your business. Users expect to enter your website and to be able to quickly find what they’re looking for. Otherwise, they will leave your site within a few seconds. However, if your search tool is used correctly, it will be a fundamental part of improving your business overall, including boosting conversions, and engagement, and generating valuable insights.
Here are five best practices to do to boost your business with site search
- The search bar should be user-friendly
- Optimize website for mobile
- Use autocomplete, autocorrect, filters, and other facts to assist users in their search
- Make the results page helpful, inspiring, and intuitive
- Analyze search data and continually improve and optimize (have relevant and authoritative content. Don’t forget keywords!
The search bar should be user-friendly as it is the portal your visitors use to engage with your site search. The search bar should be placed in an easy-to-spot location. It should be large enough so that attention is brought to it. It should be placed in a spot that makes sense across all pages. Using autocomplete, autocorrect and other textual prompts will help the user out. Additionally, most users nowadays are searching on their smartphones, not from a browser on a desktop. Such websites should be optimized for mobile devices and should include enhancements such as instant results, autocorrect, and query suggestions, as well as the UI/UX elements being mobile-friendly.
When your visitors use the search bar, the following results page should be helpful, inspiring, and intuitive. The page should be easy to read, easy navigation throughout, comprehensive, and anticipate what the visitor needs without overwhelming them. Promoted banners within the results can be used, the format should be well executed and avoid a “no-results page.”
You should always analyze your search data to understand your keywords better as well as understand your customers better. You will start to see patterns in their behavior and can segment them the same way to segment keywords. By taking a look at your analytics, you can see the path and activities that your website visitors take. This allows you to better target your visitors and continually improve their experience on your site.
Example of a great site search:
SpotSearch, by OneOrigin, is the world’s first ai-powered contextual search engine that provides instant results on the spot and delivers results in more than 40 different languages. SpotSearch is unique, with many powerful features, creating an outbreak within the search industry. It can qualify the nature of search through keyword intelligence, the cognitive behavior of the user, and deliver results that matter to the user. Site admins can easily view data and analytics, promote search results, provide unified results, and much more. SpotSearch has everything you need on a unified, seamless user interface and will always be in context.