As they click into the search box… a good practice is to show their previous search history, and possibly popular searches.   As they start typing… You can show suggested searches, categories, and/or products.   Mispellings The auto-suggestions and results should account for common misspellings. For example, if they type ‘dreses’ it should suggest results […]

For stores with 50+ products Having either a category filter (when searching) or search filters in the results page is especially important for stores with over 50 products or so. Some searches can be incredibly broad. A simple one-word search like dress or computer can return hundreds and possibly thousands of results on your standard […]

If a user searches for a product your store doesn’t have, showing an empty page is the worst thing you could possibly do. It leads them nowhere and causes frustration. Frustration can make them bounce from your store. Include some of the following components Alternate products similar to one searched for Category suggestions based on […]

Window shopping Customers don’t end up buying every single time they visit your store. More often than not, they come in, look around, and for any number of reasons leave without making a purchase. In most cases, they’re just window-shopping, if browsing products on an e-commerce store can be called that. Sometimes, they may be […]

Search expectations 72% of ecommerce sites fail to meet search expectations and returning irrelevant search results is where many of them go wrong. Unless a user is specifically looking for a page such as your returns policy or one of your categories, then they’re looking for a product.   Most searches are for a product […]

When you use Google, you almost always find relevant results for your search query. There are a lot of things going on in the background that make Google results so uncannily accurate but the average shopper doesn’t spend any time thinking about this. They bring their search results expectations from Google to your site and […]

Search is an indispensable part of the ecommerce shopping experience yet it can be a leading cause of frustration if implemented improperly. The biggest cause for concern with searches on most sites is the fact that they’re too broad. You search for a red jacket and get 200+ results. This disappointment is a direct result […]

When searching… When users are searching for Returns, Shipping, Order Tracking, and such, they should be redirected to hat page.   Adidas When you type in for example ‘returns’, it automatically redirects to the Returns page.  The problem though is that it first shows the search results page with no results and after a couple […]

Clear context Users need to know at all times where they are on the site. Mentioning the keyword they just searched for makes it clear to them what they’re looking at.