Having a powerful site search on your eCommerce store not only helps shoppers find exactly what they’re looking for, but can actually increase order values and provide valuable information on your customer’s search behavior.
By using the out-of-the-box search provided by your shopping cart provider, or a 3rd party application with a limited feature set, you’re leaving money on the table. Your store’s search should be a marketing tool designed and managed to not only pay for itself but generate revenue each time it’s used.
But, it doesn’t need to cost a fortune!
Search Magic from Your Store Wizards was built to not only be one of the most affordable 3rd party search apps, but one that is packed with features designed to increase sales, including:
Zero Term Results – are searches that are conducted that result in no matching products. In other words, things that customers aren’t finding in your store.
By looking at the zero term results on your dashboard you can use this information to do many things to improve the customer experience including:
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- Adding synonyms. For example, if you sell candy you may see a zero result term for the word “reses.” More than likely this is coming from shoppers looking for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. By creating a synonym, you can direct that misspelling to the proper “Reeses.”
- Adding redirects. Let’s say you sell office equipment but you don’t sell products manufactured by Brother. You notice that zero term results are coming up for “brother typewriter.” You can use this opportunity to set up a redirect that takes those searching “brother typewriter” to a page with all the different brands of typewriters you sell, potentially saving a sale. If you don’t sell typewriters at all, you can use this opportunity to direct them to a page that explains why and offers some alternatives.
- Collecting information. Zero term results can also be used to collect additional information from your shoppers. For example, you may want to redirect some zero term results to a feedback form asking your customers for product suggestions or seeing if they would like your help in locating an item you don’t necessarily sell but have access to. The possibilities are endless!
Redirects – Redirects are particularly helpful when you have either sections that target a particular segment, or you have a particular item that you know a specific search term is perfect for. By sending your shoppers to predefined pages via redirects, you’re making sure they find exactly what you want them to find and ultimately buy.
Let’s say you have a store that sells gear to sports fans. A visitor comes to your site and searches for their favorite team by name – the Lakers. All the items in the results have the term “Lakers” in them, as expected. But what if you could take that one step further?
By setting up redirects in Search Magic, you can set up a rule that would direct the “Lakers” search to a specific page that has every single Laker’s item on it that you sell. Not only is this great for getting every item in the face of your customer, but you can also market and promote that page in your pay-per-click campaigns.
Synonyms – If you sell items that often times are known by different names, setting up synonyms in Search Magic can help capture additional sales. For example, “cotton candy” is a well known type of confectionary sold around the world. But in addition to the name we may be familiar with, in certain areas it’s known as “candy floss.”
By setting up a synonym called “candy floss” you can be assured that customers searching that term will be directed to your great selection of “cotton candy.”
Stop Words – These are words that search engines ignore when they crawl on by to index your site. They’re also words that are ignored during a search query in order to improve results.
Here’s an example of how stop words work. Let’s say you search for “a large hat in green.” Without stop words the search engine will return results that have “a” as well as “in” as part of them and use those to determine the results displayed. This would result in search results that are not very relevant and would result in plenty of frustration.
You can set up stop words of your own in Search Magic in an effort to further refine your store’s search results. If you have terms that are regularly searched, but aren’t really key to content, you can add them to your stop words list. By default, we automatically include the most common words in the English language and give you the option to add some of your own as well.
For a complete list of features, click here to view our Search Magic Comparison Chart that puts our product up against the competition and see how we stack up.
Search Magic for Yahoo! Store
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- Most affordable site-search solution for Yahoo!
- No long-term contracts.
- Nextopia / Search Spring users save 25% or MORE by switching.
Search Magic for Shopify
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- Now available in the Shopify App Store!
- Easy and fast self-installation.
- One of the lowest-priced search apps for Shopify.
If you currently have a contract for a 3rd party search application and it’s up for renewal, or you’re looking for a more powerful search app for your store, now is the time to talk to us about switching!
Simply fill out the form below and we’ll schedule a time to discuss how Search Magic can save you money and boost your profits.
Scott Sanfilippo began his eCommerce journey in 1994 by co-founding one of the Internet’s first online retailers, TheFerretStore.com, which was acquired by PetCo in 2006. In 2001, he co-founded the eCommerce design and marketing firm Solid Cactus, which was acquired by web.com in 2009. Today, Scott is the General Manager of Your Store Wizards and lives in Delray Beach, FL. Scott can be contacted at scott@yourstorewizards.com.