With consumers increasingly shopping online for clothing, shoes and accessories, fashion brands must beef up their digital presence.
So how does a fashion brand with already-great products increase online conversions? Several factors contribute to a successful conversion for fashion retailers, including:
- A clean website design
- Crawlable site structure
- Relevant product listings
- Site search
Of all of these, site search might be most important.
According to Hamish Ogilvy of Multichannel Merchant, effective site search is the key to online retailers’ success.
“Creating a high-quality digital journey is something that often goes underappreciated,” Ogilvy wrote. “More than ever, [fashion brands] need to be on top of [their] digital presence.”
Good site search enables shoppers to enter a few keywords and easily browse relevant products. Consumers will often search based on brand, category, size, color or style.
A consumer looking for a suit to wear to a wedding might search any combination of words like ‘navy blue’, ‘men’s suit’ or ‘spring wedding attire.’
Effective site search equates to better usability, which can translate into higher sales.
According to Forrester Research, which did an in-depth report on the importance of site search for retail, 43 percent of visitors go immediately to a search box.
And according to Multichannel Merchant, on-site search typically leads to 2x/3x more conversions and 13% more revenue.
And these statistics apply to retailers across the board – not just fashion brands. So whether you’re selling sweatshirts or sandpaper, it’s time to take another look at your website’s search bar.
There are things you can do immediately to improve search functionality.
Here are a few actions recommended by Multichannel Merchant:
Organization Matters
One of the easiest ways a site manager can ensure that a customer can find a product is to make sure the SKUs are always up to date and organized with the proper tags and groupings. An improperly tagged item can find its way into the wrong taxonomy, making it less likely to show up in a query.
Personalized Recommendations
Once upon a time, there were entire systems for product recommendations and personalization. Turns out, search companies have the data and ability to personalize both recommendations and search results based on past user behavior (searches, pages or products viewed, purchases, etc.).
Plan for User Error
Nearly 20%-30% of search queries contain misspellings as people rely heavily on autocorrect and predictive text to complete their written thoughts. That’s why a site’s search functionality should account for misspellings and typos with features like “did you mean” pages and autocomplete.
For those interested in a more forward-thinking approach to improving site search, look to artificial intelligence. Features that were once hard to configure — from spell correction to autocomplete — are now available to retailers of all sizes.
If you’re looking to stay competitive in today’s digital world, make sure your site’s search function is working to its potential.
With such a large percentage of shoppers turning there first, there’s a big opportunity for converting searchers to buyers.
Sources:
https://multichannelmerchant.com/blog/fashion-brands-site-search-is-key-to-success/
https://neilpatel.com/blog/site-search-killing-your-conversion/
