Search Quality Analysis Could be the Key to Your Online Store’s Success

If you have an e-commerce website, the best way to generate business is to convert as many website visits into paying customers as possible and increase the average order value. Once a user visits your website, things like special offers, similar product listings, and suggested products are shown to entice the customer into purchases. But one thing that sometimes gets overlooked is the searches that these users are making on your website, which is where a lot of opportunities exist.

So, let’s explore on-site searches and understand why on-site searches and search quality analysis are important. We’ll also look at how this analysis can be used to improve your website's performance.

Why On-Site Search Matters?

On-site search matters because it tells you what your potential customers are searching for when they are on your website. If you haven’t optimised your product listing to match their search, you will not be able to display relevant products, which means you will make fewer sales. It also allows you to see how users are searching for products - what words are they using to phrase the search? This will allow you to do important things like -

1. Optimise your product listings to match the user’s searches.

2. Get ideas on what type of products, price ranges, and brands the users are looking for.

What is Search Quality Analysis?

When you perform a search quality analysis on your website, what you’re doing is examining the customer’s behaviour on your website. You start with where they came from (search engines or directly to the website) and then see what they searched for on your website. You examine the terms they used, products they looked at, filters they used, how many pages of search results they went through, etc.

Let’s see if we can understand this using a very basic example. Suppose you have a website that sells mobile phones, and your target market is India. You build the website and optimise it for the keyword ‘cell phones’. But, notice that you are not getting too many sales. Now, if you analyse the search patterns of your website’s users, you will find that users tend to use the term ‘mobile phones’ more than ‘cell phones’ in India. This will help you re-target your products at the keyword ‘mobile phone’. It could also help you identify -

1. The right products to showcase.

2. Products where content needs to cover keywords used in site searches.

3. What filtering options you may need for the products?

4. What changes need to be made to the site to improve the user experience?

Why is Search Quality Analysis Important?

If you have a website, no doubt, you already have tracking set up to understand how much traffic you are getting. You may also have set up goals and funnel analysis to understand where you are losing your potential customers. But this only tells you at what stage you lose your potential customers; it does not tell you why you lost them.

That is why you need search quality analysis because it will tell you what your users are searching for and how; this, in turn, will allow you to list your products in a way that makes it easy for users to find and purchase.

One other benefit of website search quality analysis is that it gives you ideas on how and what you should target to improve your SEO performance. Improving the SEO will help you rank higher in search results, get more traffic, and finally, get more conversions.

5 Challenges Search Quality Analysis can Resolve

1. Make products easier to find

Search quality analysis will show you what your customers are searching for on your website. This will allow you to ensure that your product listings, and associated content, target user searches, thus, allowing you to ensure products are easy to find.

2. Improve conversions and reduce bounce rates

Since you have optimised your search, more relevant products will now be shown to customers, and they will be more likely to make purchases. This means your conversion rates will go up. Also, because the search results are more relevant now, customers will stay on your site longer and go through more products, thus, bringing down the number of people who leave your site without interacting (i.e., bounce rate).

3. Improve the average order value

Since conversions have improved, you now have data you can use to suggest related products for purchase. Suggested products, when combined with better product listings, make for one customer buying more products, thus, increasing the overall average order value.

4. Identify popular products

Now that more products are being sold and average order values are going up, you can use site search quality analysis to identify which products are popular. This allows you to prioritise popular brands/products over others when showing site search results. Knowing the popular products also helps you identify ideal products for future promotions.

5. Set smarter goals

To measure success, you need to have goals. If you know how users are searching for products on your site, you can use it to set smarter, more realistic goals when it comes to measuring how the conversions are increasing and how the average order value grows.

When search quality analysis is used properly, it can help give your website the boost it needs to improve the overall performance. The improvement in performance can be measured through KPIs, like average order values, conversion rates, and goal achievements.

If the performance of your website achieves certain milestones, you can even approach companies like Powerhouse91. Powerhouse91 is a company that works to help e-commerce brands achieve their true potential by helping small and medium-sized brands scale up. They are always on the lookout for brands that are focused on selling through marketplaces, have identified profitable product categories, and established themselves in them. They also look for companies with ample positive reviews/ratings from customers along with a good profit turnover.