Searching is something that happens all over the internet. People are constantly searching for different products they might want to purchase. And the goal of eCommerce sites is to have people search on their site for products and make a purchase. However, in order for someone to be able to make a search on your site, an eCommerce search bar must be available. An eCommerce search bar is a feature on a site that allows users to type or speak names of products or descriptions of products in order to see specific results. Having an eCommerce search bar alone isn’t enough. The key to a successful eCommerce search bar is to be able to deliver positive results that meet the needs of your customers. Being able to deliver ideal results with an eCommerce search bar can give you a competitive advantage over other eCommerce sites who don’t offer the same.
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How Can a Search Bar Help Me?
The main thing eCommerce search bars can give eCommerce brands, besides sales, is analytical data. The best way to make a sale is to understand your customers. This means knowing what they value, what they commonly search for, and what they may need in the future. In order to know all of this, you have to study your customers and collect data. By applying an eCommerce search bar to your site, you can see exactly what customers are commonly searching for. This allows you to make decisions for marketing products and have the correct inventory levels for all of your products. If the most common item searched on your site that sells household items is kitchen utensils, then you can advertise kitchen utensils more and keep higher levels of stock. If you see that lamps are rarely searched for by users, then you can keep low inventory levels of lamps or even eliminate items that customers aren’t interested in. With the data collected from an eCommerce search bar, you can also determine when you should run sales on certain items, and create a featured item section of your most popular products.
Make Your Search Bar Accessible
In order to drive search results, your search bar needs to be accessible. This means it needs to be visible on the top of your page, and the right size so it’s proportional with your site. It should also include the ability to do a voice search. This makes it available to people who need to use voice search in order to make a search, and it makes it attractive to people who prefer voice search over typing. Voice assistants are becoming more popular for internet users. Many users are even choosing sites that have this feature over other sites that don’t offer it. Voice search can drive search results and give people access who otherwise didn’t have it before.
Make Your Search Bar Functional
Once users type or speak into the eCommerce search bar, they might get numerous results from their search. Adding features such as the ability to sort results by pricing or by most popular can amplify search results and increase customer satisfaction. Sorting by functionality allows users to take it one step further and narrow down results and organize based on preference. This can make a user search more successful and lead them to make a purchase.
Make Your Search Bar Automatic
Having an autocomplete feature in your eCommerce search bar can help customers clarify their searches and help eCommerce brands predict what users will search. By giving users the ability to autofill, you can steer your users into categories that you have already set up. Instead of having users search blindly and your data showing random searches, you can give users an idea of what to search to help keep your data more controlled. Then, you can continue to improve the predetermined search in order to drive results and give customers what they want.
Make Your Search Bar Error Free
Spelling errors can hold users back from getting ideal search results. This might happen because they don’t know how to spell certain words or they happened to mistype a word because they were in a hurry. This can hinder search results and leave customers unsatisfied. By enabling a spell correction feature, your search bar can catch errors and fix them in order to give the results the customer may want. Don’t let spelling errors hold the user back from seeing desired results and ultimately making a purchase.
Take Search Results to a New Level
Driving search results doesn’t have to be impossible. Using an eCommerce search bar to collect data can help you understand your customers and their needs. By meeting your customers’ needs, you can drive the growth of your business. Adding features to your search bar such as voice search, sorting functions autofill, and spelling correction can drive search results for your eCommerce brands.