How Important Is Ecommerce Search Functionality – Part 1

How Important Is Ecommerce Search Functionality – Part 1

Your customers today are choosy and picky. They are quality-conscious and will not settle for anything that does not meet their expectations for a product. Having robust eCommerce search functionality in place makes all the difference here.

At times, your customers are very precise about what they are looking for. At other times, the onus lies on the merchants to display the products that are likely to meet the customers’ preferences. But, in both these cases, strong search functionality is an absolute prerequisite.

What is eCommerce search functionality?

Your eCommerce website likely contains many products, which are likely to be segregated into different categories.

However, it is noteworthy that all these products will not meet any particular visitor’s fascination. A website visitor will be more or less sure about what he is looking for.

If the visitor comes across the product that he seeks or its variants in the first few seconds, he may choose to go through the product description and buy it. However, if it takes time for a customer to your website to get down to the product he is looking for, he may not refrain from taking your competitors’ services.

It is easy to see that on your eCommerce website, the search functionality makes products more accessible.

In case your products are not easily accessible for the end customer on your website, it beats the very purpose of owning the eCommerce website. This could put the success of your web mall in jeopardy. So, robust search functionality is a no-compromise arrangement for an eCommerce store.

The more products are available on your eCommerce website, the more important it is to keep the search functionality strong. The conventional channel for a customer to get down to the products he is looking for is to iteratively move down the category hierarchy. Next, the customer applies filtering and sorting so he can get down to what he is looking for.

This is a time-consuming process that strains your customers’ energies. What they prefer is to jot down a few terms in the eCommerce website’s search bar. The products that they seek will be presented before them.

Besides, your customers should also access liberties in looking for the products they want. The eCommerce search functionality should understand keyword variations. Just as an instance, a customer should be able to come across the desired products, irrespective of whether he types polo-shirts, collared t-shirts, or t-shirts with collars in the search bar. Such keyword variations should not confuse the search functionality and options for searching in regional languages should also be available. This delivers local and global dimensions to your website.

 

 

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