No Results, too many results, inconsistency and lack of communication… while there are many reasons for a customer to give up on your eCommerce site’s search the underlying problem is they couldn’t find the products they were searching for.

With average cart abandonment rates hovering around 65%, don’t let your company’s search be the monster that scares business away.

Surely any customer would be scared off by over 50,000 results on Amazon.com for a ladies Halloween costume. The first products aren’t even a good match for the search.

Follow the tips and best practices in EasyAsk’s recent blog series: “Optimizing your eCommerce site for the Holiday Season” to ensure your customers find the right products the first time.

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Why Messaging?

Intelligent search engines will show alternative products or searches when users search for something that returns no results. Messaging on product results pages are used when this has happened. It is an opportunity to inform customers why they’re seeing a particular set of products and it is imperative that users quickly understand what has happened so that their confidence in the search system is maintained.

Messaging might be used in the following instances:

Spell Correction

When a change has been made to the original text, it is important to inform the user how the spelling has been changed. For example,

“sofaa” returned no results, so we’re showing you results for “sofa” instead.

It is, of course, necessary that your spell correct function is up to the job in the first place. An intelligent search engine will check spellings against the company data as well as a dictionary.

Out of Stock Products

Popular products may periodically go out of stock. Messaging allows your business to let customers know that certain products would normally be available and that you are showing them alternative products. For example,

“Gracey Recliner” returned no results, so we’re showing you results for “leather recliner” instead. The Gracey recliner is currently unavailable.

Products not in the Catalog

If your business does not stock a particular brand, but does stock brands who produce similar products, it is important to redirect your customers to relevant alternative products. An electronics supplier might display a message such as: “Sorry, we don’t stock Canon, but Nikon is an excellent alternative”.

Simply telling your customers that you don’t stock a particular product or brand is a missed opportunity.

Relaxation

With certain customer search queries, part of a search may need to be relaxed. If a user’s search has been changed in this way, a message explaining the changes to the original search should be displayed. For example, a user may search for “purple leather couches” and see the following message: “Sorry, we don’t have purple leather couches, but here are the leather couches we do have”.

This user could have searched for leather couches in the first instance and spent a long time scrolling through the pages of results looking for any in purple. But by using messaging in this way, the user is informed immediately and is more likely to use the search system again.

Keeping the Customer Informed

The key to messaging is letting the user know what is happening. If there is a message that could be conveyed, it should always be displayed, and the more explicit you can be, the better. This gives the user confidence in the search system. Conversely, if no message is displayed when changes have been made to a search, it is confusing for the user. If, for example, an alternative brand of product is presented with no messaging to explain why, the user may assume that the search is not working, lose confidence in the search system and even abandon the site. Ideally, there would be multiple messages set up for different purposes.

Implementing messaging on product result pages is straightforward to set up and configure with EasyAsk’s intuitive search solution.

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Redirects

When done right, Redirects have the power to inform and invite your customers towards more relevant content. Running a text-search for their queries may not be the most appropriate next step in their journey through your eCommerce site. Sometimes, it is more appropriate to show a different page or set of results. And customers who realize that your search engine is intelligent and intuitive in this way will trust you with their time and money.

How can I use Redirects?

There are many uses for Redirects in eCommerce and we like to define them in three ways:

Web Page Redirects

A Web Page Redirect redirects a search term to a specific web page instead of performing a search. It is useful for catching queries, such as ‘delivery’ or ‘returns’. For example, a customer may enter ‘delivery’ into a search box to find out about the company delivery costs or policies. When a Web Page Redirect is set up for ‘delivery’, the customer is redirected to the delivery web page rather than the engine running a search. This kind of redirect can be set up to recognize queries such as, “Where’s my order?” or, “How much does delivery cost?”

Web Page Redirects are also valuable for when you wish to direct customers to a specially-created landing page. For example, you might set up a redirect for a particular brand that takes customers to a brand page that includes brand information, cross-sells and other content. Perhaps you would like customers who search for party dresses over the coming months to be redirected to a ‘Christmas Party’ landing page that displays dresses, jewelry, shoes, and other accessories.

Search Page Redirects

A Search Page Redirect redirects from one search to another search. For example, there may be searches for which you wish your customers to only see a specific set of products that you have defined. Instead of seeing results for their original search, customers will be redirected to a different results page. Perhaps when users search for a particular brand, you would like to drive them to a particular set of products with a special deal or a higher profit margin.

Conditional Definitions

This tool, unique to the EasyAsk solution, is an incredibly useful way to avoid ‘No Results’ pages for products that are out of stock. If a business identifies a popular product that frequently goes out of stock, it is possible to use Conditional Definitions to show the specific product if it is in stock, but a different (defined) set of products, should the requested product be out of stock at that time. Our previous blog in the series, ‘Reducing No Results’, covers this in further detail.

Take Control

By using Redirects in conjunction with data from their search analytics, retailers can take control of their customers’ experience. When customers use the search box, they don’t always need or want the search results for their query. Redirects allow flexibility over what pages and products are put in front of customers. Redirects are just one of the many tools that are part of EasyAsk’s intuitive search solution.

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