The Current State Of E-Commerce Search

Advances in the web industry let consumers shop anywhere, anytime. As

the ecommerce has evolved tremendously and changed the shopper’s

retail approach. From small to large scale industries are now in need of

creating a personal ecommerce website that represents their brand and

transforms their business. It gives a great opportunity to retailers and

manufacturers to create a direct relationship with their consumers.

But to create a successful ecommerce website, you need to focus on

some critical aspects of your web design. One of the important key

component that contribute a lot in conversion rate is ecommerce on-

site search as most of the users prefer searching over clicking categories

We have tested ecommerce search experience of 19 major e-commerce

websites with real world end users.

In this article, we’ll explore the current state of ecommerce based on

large scale usability study.

16% of e-commerce websites do not support searching by product

name or model number, despite those details appearing on the

product page!

18% of websites provide no useful results when the user types a

single character wrong in the product’s name.

Failing to return relevant products for, say, “blow dryer” if “hair

dryer” is typed, or “multifunction printer” if “all-in-one printer” is

typed.

60% of e-commerce websites do not support searches with

symbols and abbreviations.

82% of e-commerce websites autocomplete suggestions.

92% of the top-50 websites display only one breadcrumb type or

none at all. Breadcrumbs are used to ease navigation.

Below, we have presented some ways to improve the search experience

and success rate of these ecommerce websites.

It’s important that the search logic broadens the query’s scope and

looks for closely related spellings.

Build a keyword synonym logic.

Map all common keywords, symbols, abbreviations and full

spellings to each other.

Provide product-specific filters that relate directly to the user’s

query.

Keep in mind that the experience and performance on these websites

are entirely influenced by non – visible factors such as search logic and

product data integration.

We hope, the article will give you all the insights of your ecommerce

website design that help you to improve the shopping experience of end

users.