Using data-driven approach to your internal site search makes you 23 times more likely to acquire customers and 6 times more likely to retain customers than others.
While intuition and gut feelings are vital when making crucial business decisions, you cannot solely rely on them for informed choices. Making business decisions without credible data-driven approaches often leads to risk. That’s especially true when dealing with high-stakes decisions, such as your company's sustainability.
A data-driven approach gives you the necessary tools to understand, verify, and quantify the outcomes of your decisions. This approach instills greater confidence in your choices and enables you to steer your eCommerce to success — with factual evidence rather than subjective opinion.
Your decision-making processes are more informed and strategic.
And on that note, this article will guide you on a data-driven approach to internal site search success.
Data-Driven Approach to Internal Site Search Success: 5 Touchpoints to Consider
We don’t recommend that you discard your inner voice of reason. But we can assure you that using accurate data to measure your work and plan your next moves yields superior results.
By their very nature, eCommerce businesses heavily rely on data and analytics.
Companies driven by data have more confidence in their strategies. They possess the capability to make precise predictions — identifying emerging industry trends and business opportunities in advance.
Further, they have greater agility and efficiency. They can rapidly measure outcomes, experiment with novel strategies, and adapt accordingly. As a result of this expeditious feedback loop, they can respond to market shifts much faster than their competitors, enhancing their competitive edge.
Having said all that, below are five touchpoints to consider when optimizing your internal site search for a big bang.
1. Look At The Search Volume
The search volume is the number of times users enter a particular term or phrase into a search engine over a specific period. Search volume evaluates the popularity and relevance of individual keywords or topics to a website's audience.
For example:
You can monitor the number of searches for particular terms in your internal search bar to determine the subjects or goods your site visitors look up most. You can then use that metric to optimize your website's content and search capabilities to serve your users' demands better.
By analyzing internal search volumes for relevant keywords, you can test the level of demand for specific products or services, pinpoint potential market gaps, uncover variances in customer needs and interests over time, or track how your marketing efforts are going.
Monitoring search volumes helps eCommerce merchants stay attuned to their customer's interests and behavior and make data-driven decisions to improve their marketing and business strategies.
That’s why HeyDay provides an intuitive dashboard with detailed information on historical search volume patterns and associated keywords. With that, you could quickly grasp any missing links or subject areas that would interest visitors to a website instead of onboarding 50 different tools for that insight.
2. Measure Your Internal Search Efficiency
Search efficiency tracks the effectiveness of your internal site search tool in retrieving relevant and accurate results for a user's search query.
And factors that influence your search efficiency include:
The search algorithm.
The quality of your data.
The search filters and options you have.
The user interface and experience.
Maximizing search efficiency is crucial as it improves user satisfaction, increases engagement and conversion rates, and helps you achieve set business goals.
So, to win big in your marketing efforts, you must constantly measure your internal search efficiency.
Here’s how:
Establish your baseline goal. What are you trying to achieve with your internal search functionality? Are you increasing conversions, reducing bounce rates, or improving customer satisfaction? Identifying your goal helps you determine what metrics to track.
Using that baseline goal(s), determine relevant KPIs for measuring the success of your internal search. Some common KPIs for this purpose include search conversion rate, search exit rate, and time on site.
Use HeyDay’s Analytics to track your KPIs over time, so you can visualize trends and patterns in your search data and make data-driven decisions on improvement areas.
Refining your eCommerce site search helps you keep accurate track of the needs and preferences of your audience to ensure visitors aren’t bouncing off your site.
That brings us to the next point:
3. Track Your Bounce Rate
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a single page on your website that subsequently leave the page without taking any further action on your website. That is to say, a "bounce" happens when a user exits your website after visiting just one page.
It's crucial to remember that not all bounces are detrimental.
For instance, a successful interaction might occur if a prospect visits your landing page, finds the content they were looking for, and then leaves. Yet, a high bounce rate is a sign of problems, such as a slow loading speed, difficulty finding specific products or services, a bad user experience, or irrelevant content.
Analyzing your website’s bounce rates helps you understand what’s happening behind the scenes and improve conversion rates.
Data segmentation by traffic source and page type is crucial for accurate measurement and analysis of bounce rate. Conducting user testing also gives you direct feedback from users on their experience of your website or landing page.
With that, you can ferret out issues contributing to high bounce rates and make data-driven decisions to improve user experience.
4. Evaluate Time On Site
Time on site measures a user's overall time on your website in a single session. It’s a vital user engagement metric that gives you crucial insights into how engaging or exciting your website is to its visitors.
To calculate Time On Site, subtract the time users enter a website from when they exit. You can view it by session or averages over a while – such as a day, week, or month.
For example:
Suppose a user enters your website at 11:00 AM and exits at 12:10 PM. In that case, their Time On Site would be 10 minutes.
Measuring Time On Site is essential as it gives you a clear picture of how users interact with your website and where they may be experiencing issues or challenges, such as not finding products quickly.
With that insight, you can optimize your search tool to keep people engaged with your site. The more time they spend on your assets equals higher chances of conversion.
5. Track User Search Depth
Search depth measures the pages a user visits after entering your website. It provides insights into how engaged users are with your content and how well your search results meet their needs.
An example of search depth is when a user conducts a site search and then clicks on a few search results. If they leave your site immediately after that, it might indicate that the search results must be more relevant and helpful in meeting their needs.
On the convex, if a user conducts a search and then clicks through to several pages, spending a significant amount of time on your site, you can be sure the search results effectively met their needs and engaged them with your content.
Again, tracking user search depth guides you in identifying areas for improvement in your internal site search. That data is easy to come by using HeyDay’s AI-assisted search tool, which you can implement in 15 seconds and transform your eCommerce shop through typeless search and discovery.
In conclusion, I leave you with these numbers:
A NewVantage Partners survey says 91.6% of executives in big organizations (with more than $1 billion in annual revenue) are investing in AI initiatives, and 79.4% of executives believe these investments create a competitive advantage for their businesses.
McKinsey & Company says data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable due to their data-driven initiatives compared to their competitors, who do not use data-driven decision-making.
You are lagging behind the market leaders if you're not already using HeyDay to add a positive spin to your internal site search.
About the Author
Tom-Chris Emewulu is HeyDay’s Digital Evangelist. With 8+ years of digital marketing and business development experience, he crafts high-intent, high-converting, data-driven SEO articles that put brands on page 1 of Google search. Forbes, DW, Business Insider, Businessss2Community, and many other publications have featured his works. You can find him on Social Media via @tomchrisemewulu.
コメント