Nothing is more frustrating than being on a site, typing something in the search bar, and not finding what you are looking for. Your customers feel the same way, and will leave your website in the blink of an eye. This is why it’s important to gain their interest even if you don’t have what they are looking for. After all, they may not have typed the the exact matching product description or could have spelled a product name wrong. Here are a few ways to turn their head before they turn on to another web page.
Include Auto-Complete in Search Field
Offering suggested words as the user is typing in the search bar is a good thing to take advantage of. This will help if the user doesn’t know the proper spelling of a product, or isn’t sure what they are looking for. It also benefits people that know what they are looking for, because they won’t have to type the whole phrase out.
Review Site Search Data
Knowing what people are searching for is very important. This will help you find commonly misspelled words, or synonyms that you can use to help maximize search results. After you review the list you can add alternate spellings or other word suggestions to the search results page.
Make Sure Product Features Are Indexed
Having a site search doesn’t do much good if your products aren’t indexed. Be sure to include related words that people might search for when looking for a product. This helps to increase the chance of them landing on the right page that they are looking for even if they don’t type the name of the product in. There is also a possibility that they could be searching based on features instead of the product itself.
Offer Alternative Spelling Suggestions
If a customer types in “anti-ageing” then instead of displaying no results, say “did you mean anti-aging?” You can pull these recommendations from your existing search data then match them to products that you offer when appropriate. This can also help with hyphenated products or products that hold several names.
Display Your Site’s Most Popular Search Terms
A customer may not know the exact name of what they are looking for, so display frequently searched words will help. Link them directly to a separate Even if nothing in this list matches what they were originally looking for, it may peak an interest in something else.