In this highly competitive world of eCommerce business, your customers provide an exceptional shopping experience. One of the crucial aspects is offering them blazing-fast search functionality. Talking about smart search, it’s the heart of an eCommerce business, as it’s an interactive way for the users to find the information they’re eventually looking for.
Unlike a conventional search engine, which indexes the pages based on the keywords, a smart search uses artificial intelligence to analyze the text of the webpages and return the results that are looking for. Users could also see all products related to a specific keyword or phrase. This will allow customers to compare options and make more informed purchasing decisions. In this blog, we will explore the importance of smart search in eCommerce, its benefits, features, and implementation.
What are the benefits of using a Smart Search?
When consumers search for products or services online, they often use search engines to find what they want. For example, if you’re looking for a new pair of sports shoes for your gym, you might use a keyword search that includes terms like Athletic shoes, walking shoes, athletic shoes, and so on. A “smart search” is a feature that allows customers to dive into specific product categories or search for specific items. Let’s understand its certain benefits:
- Improved user experience
Smart search helps users to find what they’re looking for in a much more efficient way. This will lead to an improved shopping experience. The good thing is that it will quickly predict the user’s intent on their digital property in real-time, at the moment.
- Increased customer engagement
Smart search allows the customers to navigate your product catalog more effectively, encouraging them to spend more time on your website. This results in increased customer engagement, essential for building brand loyalty. With this, you’ll be able to win their trust.
- Better Conversion Rates
Since you’re helping your customers find their desired product, they’re more likely to purchase. As a result, eCommerce businesses that offer smart search will be able to win their customers’ wallets.
- Enhanced customer loyalty and retention
A powerful search engine that offers personalized results can help build customer loyalty. It simplifies the ability to understand the user’s intent. Users who receive the relevant recommendation are more likely to return to your website.
- Improved operational efficiency
Smart search also benefits eCommerce businesses by improving operational efficiency. When users can find what they’re looking for without needing to contact customer support. It Frees up your team to focus on other critical tasks.
Also read: How can social commerce earn revenue for your eCommerce Business?
In-built Traits of Smart Search in eCommerce
It now has a revolutionary feature for eCommerce websites, making it easier for clients to find the products they’re looking for. The smart search typically includes several key features, which include;
- Auto-Suggest
Auto-suggestion is a feature that makes suggestions to users as they begin typing their search queries, making it easier for users to quickly find the information they require. The best thing is that it will reduce the consumer’s effort while looking for their desired products.
- Optimize Synonyms and related terms
It helps to make the browsing experience much more productive by understanding the user’s intent behind the search word, as they understand the matching keywords of products. In this way, the algorithm efficiently understands long-tail sentences and caters to them accordingly.
- Spell correction
Smart search algorithms use some advanced techniques to identify and correct spelling errors in search queries. These algorithms can also help to analyze the context and the intent of the search query to suggest related or alternative search terms that might better match the customer’s needs.
- Personalized search results
I’m not talking about buying in person—every customer likes to be cared for. Customers feel heard and cared for on personalized eCommerce sites. Personalizing search can increase sales and customer retention. The Smart eCommerce Algorithm personalized search results to increase sales.
- Control Consumer Behavior Insights
A smart ecommerce search engine might reveal your consumers’ product search inquiries. Popular queries can be prioritized by assessing buying intent, consumer behavior, and search patterns. It could also help your company increase its product portfolio. Offer them add-ons or versions of their favorite products based on their unusual search searches.
- Display Popular Searches
Shoppers like well-known brands. Your consumer will also look for famous brands and products in the feed. Smart Search Algorithm highlights the most sought-after products to improve customer experience. This will make your customers think your business is best for them, and they’re associated with famous brands and quality products.
Suppose you visit a site, and before you try to ask about a product, it will automatically display those products that receive enough user searches.
- Autocomplete Search Query
A search engine will predict your customer’s search queries in such a way that they type. It will offer an auto-complete version for specific queries you need to manage the guide to the most in-demand and relevant products. And, if it doesn’t match with the exact keyword, the least it can do is display the potential matches.
- Voice Search in eCommerce
Smart Search lets people search by voice. E-commerce can employ this technology to enable voice searches. Speech recognition in AI allows it. It simplifies problem-solving for disabled, illiterate, and busy users. It corrects mispronunciations.
How big players empowering their eCommerce with Smart Search Experience
Almost every industry that’s doing business online will be going to benefit from the advanced search features. Even though, there are some of the popular eCommerce businesses offer smart search, including:-
Amazon
Amazon is the largest online retailer globally, and its search engine is undoubtedly one of the most influential and sophisticated in the eCommerce industry. It can recognize even the least definite of search terms and provides search results based on a user’s previous searches and purchases. Amazon’s search engine offers a seamless experience to customers, displaying relevant search results and enabling users to filter their search according to price, reviews, and other product attributes.
Walmart
Talking Walmart Search engine, it’s fast and accurate and offers personalized search results based upon the user’s location and browsing history. It also offers helpful search suggestions, spelling corrections, and product recommendations based on the user’s search history, making the search experience more relevant and personalized.
Sephora
Sephora’s search engine is well-optimized for product discovery, recognizing spelling mistakes, and offering product recommendations based on user preferences. It also allows users to filter search results by product type, brand, and other vital attributes, making finding what they’re looking for easier.
Target
The target search engine is easy to use, allowing customers to filter their search results by product category, price range, and brand. It also helps to acknowledge synonyms and related terms by offering customers more relevant search results.
Macy’s
Macy’s Search engine is designed to offer a personalized search experience to your user; it is based on the user’s search history and the preferences they’ve selected. It also recognizes the synonym and related terms, providing customers with more accurate search results. Moreover, it allows users to filter them based on the product attributes such as price, color, and brand.
Implementation of Smart Search in eCommerce
In eCommerce, using smart search is one of the ways to do that. In addition to being efficient and delivering the most assertive results quickly. Let’s understand where we could implement smart search in eCommerce.
Third-party smart search solution
Companies can employ third-party smart search solutions if their platforms have something other than built-in smart search capability. These solutions offer cutting-edge capabilities like autocomplete, product recommendations, and search analytics and are developed to effortlessly interact with eCommerce systems.
Considerations for implementing smart search in eCommerce
Considerations for eCommerce smart search include product kind, target audience, and budget. Optimizing search results for accuracy and relevance and constantly testing the search functionality is also important. To satisfy customers, firms should make their search features easy to use.
Which are the different players that offer smart search facilities?
Several players in the market are providing you with this service, but we have curated the list of specific companies that can cater to all your requirements.
- Searchanise: The company was established in 2013; it has more than 14,000 clients and processes more than 01 billion search queries monthly. The company offers different-different plans for different platforms. The company offers flexibility irrespective of the number of products your store has.
- Klevu: Founded in 2013, Klevu search, and product discovery engines boost ecommerce website traffic, conversion, and loyalty while lowering bounce rates. It interfaces with major ecommerce platforms in hours and is simple to configure, optimize, and maintain.
- Algolia: Alogolia was established in 2012, and it had only one thing on its mind, to authorize every customer by providing them with an appealing search experience. Today, Algolia powers almost 1.5 trillion searches annually, almost 04 times more than Baidu, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Yandex. Their technology is being used by one in eight online users.
- Doofinder: Doofinder was founded to reduce the high cost of technology that inhibits the expansion of businesses of all sizes worldwide. It loads your search engine with the best-in-class feature and a perfect tool that offers an excellent user experience. They market them using a subscription plan, which makes high-end, complex software accessible to anybody.
- Searchspring: Colorado Springs-based startup Searchspring was established in 2007 to provide advanced site search and merchandising technology to e-commerce sites. Today, they’re the proud industry leader who provides enhanced solutions on the native eCommerce platforms for their insights, merchandising, personalization, on-site search, and much more.
- Wizzy: They support merchants to boost sales by up to 24% with the superfast and context-specific experience. You will also receive real-time interaction analytics to understand how many searches lead to sales in real time. The best part is that it can integrate into any eCommerce platform or with any customized coded shopping site.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a sophisticated Ecommerce search will help buyers to find their respective products precisely what they are looking for fast and efficiently and indirectly improving conversion rate. By selecting precise terms and phrases, users can limit their search to only the products or commodities they are interested in. That’s why in eCommerce, We consider search as the heart of a website.
We strongly suggest any ecommerce merchants take advantage of advanced smart search to empower eCommerce buyer journeys and increase conversion rate. If you looking for any sort of technical support implementing above listed Advance search solution in your Magento or Shopify ecommerce website, we can help you through our eCommerce Development Services.
Thanks for Reading.
