More Related Content Similar to Ditch the Rabbit Hole: How to Make Site Searches Customer-Friendly Similar to Ditch the Rabbit Hole: How to Make Site Searches Customer-Friendly (20) More from Phillip Jackson More from Phillip Jackson (11) Ditch the Rabbit Hole: How to Make Site Searches Customer-Friendly2. Copyright © 2017
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such statements or claims.
CAUTIONARY NOTE:
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WHAT THIS TALK IS ABOUT
• Discovery and desire
• Analysis
• An exploration of business capability and maturity
• Beyond the catalog
• Changing consumer expectations
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• Do you need search?
• Size of catalog
• Diversity of product offering
• Can you avoid search investment in favor of better UI/UX or
clever merchandising?
DISCOVERY STARTS WITH ASKING "WHY"
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• Requires ongoing investment, curation
• Creates additional customer touchpoints (e.g. call center
fielding support requests)
• User input is a vector for security issues
SEARCH IS A RABBIT HOLE
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• Search converts higher when:
• Customers are motivated
• Search is visible and accessible
• Results are relevant
WHY SITE SEARCH MATTERS
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• Search converts lower when:
• Users can't find it
• It’s hard to use
• Returns irrelevant results
WHY SITE SEARCH MATTERS
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• Results, catalog, user intent change over time
• End-user devices evolve new capabilities, conventions,
standards and vocabularies (e.g. Responsive Web,
Progressive Web)
• Customer expectations continue to heighten
WE HAVE TO PURPOSELY INVEST IN SEARCH
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• First/repeat, registered/guest
• Referring channel conversion (e.g. paid, organic, social,
affiliates, display)
• Search type - paid, natural, brand, long-tail
• Product category type (high ticket items, commodities)
• Promotional/seasonality
THERE ISN’T ONE SINGULAR
CONVERSION RATE
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• Tracking segmented conversion rate allows us to test and
target improvements more accurately
• We can target other efforts with great efficacy:
• "improve site search" vs "improve search results for
returning paid display ad visitors"
• Requires communication across teams and disciplines
THERE ISN'T ONE CONVERSION RATE FOR
ON-SITE SEARCH EITHER
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USING DATA CAN BE A DIFFERENTIATOR
http://sitesearch.sli-systems.com/Survey-2013-11-11-Global-eCommerce-US-Registration-Page.html
Don't use site search data for marketing programs
Create SEO landing pages with site search results/banners
Integrate search data into email marketing
Regular site search powers mobile
Integrate banners into search results
Integrate search with social channels
Integrate search results into display ads 10%
11%
11%
13%
24%
26%
56%
32. Small
Catalog
Small Team
Loads of Traffic
Small Budget
Content Search
Personalization
Integration with
Channels
Compliance
Business Digital Maturity
ValueprovidedbySaaS
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• Typeahead
• Layered/filter results
• Deep link to filtered results
• Dashboards/reports
• Manual curation
BASELINE CAPABILITIES
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• Learns taxonomy
• Suggests misspellings
• Merchandise “no results” page
• Target promotions
• Feed other channels (e.g. social, email)
INTERMEDIATE CAPABILITIES
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• Content/document search
• Personalization
• Test/target
• Suggestion of segmentation
• Feed data profiles via other sources
ADVANCED CAPABILITIES
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• Pre-fill popular searches
• Draw attention to search with motion, keyboard focus
• Capture keyboard input directly to the search
• Display images for product results
• Segment result types
UI CONSIDERATIONS
41. "The time has come," the Walrus
said, "To talk of many things: Of
shoes—and ships—and sealing-
wax— Of cabbages—and kings
— And why the sea is boiling hot
— And whether pigs have wings."
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
42. "The time has come," the Walrus
said, "To talk of many things: Of
shoes—and ships—and sealing-
wax— Of cabbages—and kings
— And why the sea is boiling hot
— And whether pigs have wings."
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
43. "The time has come," the Walrus
said, "To talk of many things: Of
shoes—and ships—and sealing-
wax— Of cabbages—and kings
— And why the sea is boiling hot
— And whether pigs have wings."
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
Walrus
ships sealing-
wax cabbages kings
boiling
pigs wings
44. “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
Walrus
ships sealing-
wax cabbages kings
boiling
pigs wings
45. “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
Walrus ships sealing-wax
cabbages kings
boiling pigs wings
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• Unindexed content / synonyms
• Custom taxonomy
• Acquisition sources
• Content/commerce
CHALLENGES
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Over-curating synonyms
Redirecting brand terms results to
brand pages
Creating purpose-built categories
instead of leveraging search filters,
deep links
UN-PAINTING THE ROSES
Inevitable terms overlap leads to
confusing results
Loss of search results data and
clickthrough
Categories go away/change urls,
search is constant
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• Not every feature works for every site
• “Sponsoritis” leads to confusion of brand and unclear
objectives for customers
• Letting your competitors set your direction or agenda
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
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• Speed to market is important, but it’s
only one of many factors
• Once you adopt a solution it’s harder
to migrate away, take time making
the right business decision
• Perform a 3-year TCO calculation
DON’T FORGET OPPORTUNITY COST
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• Vendors and platforms sell on
“plug-and-play” but that’s not
how it works in the real world
• Temper expectations and
focus on delivery
• Set realistic goals
SETTING EXPECTATIONS
61. out of the box
features
guided
navigation
sorting and
filtering
Integral part
of marketing
strategy,
query
processing,
relevancy
tuning
sophisticated
statistical
mapping,
engine
scoring,
monitored
results
segmented
conversion
rates and
revenue by
channel.
shared data
across org.
personalization
THE COMMERCE SEARCH MATURITY MODEL
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EXAMPLE ROI CALCULATION
Site Visitors using
Search
87,164 2.7% of Total
Site Search
Conversion
5.32%
AOV $129
Site Search
Revenue
$598,234 8.6% of Total
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EXAMPLE ROI CALCULATION
Total Project Implementation Cost $9,000.00
1 Year SaaS Platform Fees $6,000.00
$15,500.00Total:
Breakeven at ~8 Months
Increase Conversion to 5.42% (^1.88%)
100 Additional Searches/Mo (UI Treatment)
$1,129.00/mo
$684/mo
$14,504.00Total:
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• As a business matures marketing matures, personalization
encapsulates functionalities of on-site search
• Search reaches beyond direct to consumer
• Cross-discipline:
• Amazon search
• Enterprise search
• More…
A SUBSET OF PERSONALIZATION
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• Business maturity affects solution choice
• Measure your business maturity
• Choose your solution carefully
• Employ data from across the organization
• Match capabilities with business maturity
• Create detailed plan and set goals
RECAP
68. “I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this
morning, but it’s no use going back to yesterday,
because I was a different person then.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll