Site search strategy for publishers - Amazon Partners 29/06/17

Site search strategyStephen Kenwright @stekenwright

Until we get better at informing customers than Google…

Here …or here?

…it will continue to screw us

inc.com/john-lincoln/why-googles-new-buy-button-is-a-direct-shot-at-amazon.html

30% of visitors will perform an onsite search

econsultancy.com/reports/site-search-report

Searchers generate more revenue than non-searchers

econsultancy.com/reports/site-search-report

2.41%

5.45%

0.00%

1.00%

2.00%

3.00%

4.00%

5.00%

6.00%

Non-site search users Site search users

Average conversion rateNon site search users vs. site search users

84% of companies don’t optimiseor even measure site search

econsultancy.com/reports/site-search-report

Turn on site search analytics

Click

Turn on site search analyticsClick

Turn on site search analytics

Make sure this is checked

Find your report

Visitors whose search returns 0 resultsare 2.5x more likely to leave

econsultancy.com/reports/site-search-report

Create variables in Tag Manager

What text is displayed for 0 result searches?

Variable #1 looks for CSS Selector called “#search-results”

Variable #2 codifies all pages with results as “Results”

Variable #3 scrapes the searched keyword

Create a tag to fire the event on Search Results pages

…and get this back

A successful April Fool’s for ThinkGeek…

nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29fob-consumed-t.html

…led to a successful product

thinkgeek.com/product/bb2e

Questions to askTechnology

Which product/platform/tool powers it?

Was it implemented in house or externally?

Whose job is it?

Is there a functional spec/search user journey document available?

Is there another site with a search experience you think is good?

Questions to askResponse

Are there known use cases where search results are poor?

Are the results returned (particularly first page) highly relevant to your query?

What happens when you add more complexity to a query?

How fast are results returned?

Is relevance/speed consistent?

Questions to askFunctions

Is there an autosuggest/autocomplete feature?

Can it cope with typos?

Can you sort the results?

Are queries for dates/numbers/special characters supported?

Is the number of results shown correct/useful?

Garbage in, garbage out –Poor/duplicate meta data ruins internal search

(and costs organic traffic)

Optimising your site search= optimising for voice search

Thanksstephen.Kenwright@branded3.com

@stekenwright