While retailers may have invested thousands of pounds in building their e-commerce sites and driving people to them, the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity can be down to something as simple as a spelling mistake. Mathias Duda, head of UK operations for Omikron Data Quality and FACT-Finder.com, explains how improving search and navigation on your site can be key to converting your customers.
While e-commerce may be exploding, so is the competition for customers. With so many options available at the click of a mouse, consumers can be fickle and unforgiving when it comes to choosing their online stores. If your site takes too long to load or if your products are difficult to locate then the chances are you'll not only lose a sale, but also a customer.
While most brands now understand the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) to drive people to their site, they are only just starting to understand the impact that search and navigation within the site can have on conversion rates and, ultimately, sales.
Our own research shows that e-tailers are losing at least 20 per cent in this area due to failed searches; specifically through typos and spelling variations. For example, in an analysis of over 150 million search queries from more than 800 internet retailers, we discovered the word 'Birkenstock' in 80 variations. For a standard search engine, these kinds of search queries are simply invisible.
While some retailers may have a manual system in place where they have to update some form of dictionary to ensure the relevant results are delivered, this can be very labour intensive. Fortunately, search utilities are now coming online that use a type of 'fuzzy logic' to capture these types of spelling errors.
Search relevance is another key area that can cause problems for site visitors. All products, or related products, must turn up within the first two pages of any search result; ideally the first page. Just 22 per cent of people performing site searches look beyond page one of any search result.
Furthermore, the criteria for presenting these results – such as by popularity, by age of product or by frequency of purchase – can not only help deliver relevant results, but also take the consumer in a certain direction. Again any on-site search functions should also be able to learn from consumer searching behaviour and reflect this in real time as products become more popular.
However, the reality is that any search can only be as good as the structure of the data provided by the retailer or service provider. Structured product information is needed to provide dynamic filters (faceted navigation) within your site's search and navigation to allow users to search on relevant attributes like colour, size or brands, categories and price.
Again according to our own research, these types of filters are accessed by around 50 per cent of searchers, and predominantly by people going through the navigation rather than the search box.
And this is a crucial point to remember: not everyone uses search, so having easy to follow navigation is equally important. A lack of coherent navigation was rated as one of the main barriers to purchase in a recent survey undertaken by FACT-Finder. Indeed, many of the leading online retailers now use dynamic, attribute-driven navigation, which allows filtering on multiple options rather than just going top-down.
And these should generate results ranked in the same way as a search function, taking into account stock, margin, revenue and, most importantly, which items customers do buy and which they don't.
It is a harsh reality in today's online market that an unforgiving internal search engine and unsympathetic navigation will mean that products may become difficult to find, which will result in lost sales. And lost customers. Fortunately, there are systems on the market that take these requirements into account producing more reliable product location, and retailers need to ensure they are investing in this area if hey want to succeed. The lesson is really very simple: if they can't see it, they can't buy it.
Mathias Duda is head of UK operations for Omikron Data Quality and FACT-Finder.com