What Are The Hidden Purchasing Decisions in Site Search? [Especially eCommerce]

Site search on eCommerce sites is the strongest entry into a visitor’s mind.

Consider for a second that on an eCommerce site, there are only two points at which visitors explicitly express their interest in a product:

• At the time of entering the search keywords.
• At the time of purchase.

At all other times, visitors are only implicitly expressing their wishes.

Therefore, it is important for e-commerce sites to extract maximum value from a visitor’s behavior. Such insight must come from both search keywords and purchase history.

Purchase History Vs. Search Keywords

Using only purchase history is limiting for such insight. A purchase decision is based not just on a visitor’s interest in the product but also the price, availability, etc.

This leaves us with search as the purest, undiluted signal of a visitor’s interest.

What insights can I get?

• If done right, there are some crucial questions that marketing departments will be able to answer:Which products are most popular? Do they sell in the same proportion of their search keyword popularity?
• Which stores are browsed most and which ones are most popular when it comes to purchase?Is there a disconnect between most viewed stores and the highest selling stores?
• Do visitors search for exact products or are they discovering products once on the site? Could we improve our SEM campaigns based on this insight?
• Do some searched products convert better than others? Why?

In the end, leadership’s goal is to use this data to track down below-par performance in categories, stores or brands and take remedial action. They can use this data to highlight best performing or worst performing stores, categories and products and take highly focused steps in improving conversions in low performing areas.

Author

Shehjar Tikoo, works at Unbxd, where they’re building Unbxd Commerce Search, the next generation e-commerce merchandising product.