Don’t Underestimate the Power of Site Search (Especially During the Holidays)

Co-authored by Vinod Kumar , CEO, Syntheum AI & Caila Schwartz , Director of Consumer Insights, Salesforce

About 20% of all orders are driven by site search — and this number spikes during holidays. When you consider that shoppers using site search have a high propensity to buy, optimizing this part of the ecommerce experience is worth every effort. Here are a few key strategies and best practices to make site search shine.

The value of search-oriented, intentional shoppers

Not all shopping sessions are created equal: There’s a difference between a customer casually browsing your site and one that’s intentionally on the hunt for a specific product or category. And that’s where site search comes in. Intentionality and expediency are exactly the promises site search delivers on. 

Intentional shoppers are some of the best shoppers a brand could hope for. They’re likely to convert and ready to buy — as long as they can quickly find exactly what they’re looking for. This is especially true when it comes to holiday shoppers. Gift-givers are some of the most intentional shoppers out there. They arrive at your site with a list in hand, specific items in mind, and time-sensitive purchases to finalize.

A brief history of site search and how it’s changing

With the rise of social commerce on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, the way we discover products has changed drastically over the past few years. Mobile device transactions make up 60% of global ecommerce sales, and social commerce sales are estimated to reach $2.9 trillion by 2026. To adapt, many brands have thrown their weight behind responsive design to account for an increase in mobile device traffic — and rightly so. However, the adoption of responsive constructs and the focus on social media channels as the ultimate form of product discovery have meant a shift away from the prominence of site search. It seems that the on-site search functionality has been relegated to a tiny corner of many ecommerce sites. 

Today, site search can be difficult to find and even harder to use. This can be detrimental to conversion rates. As mobile sessions get shorter and shorter, subpar site search can be a recipe for abandoned carts.

The current state of site search 

According to Salesforce data, an average of 6% of shoppers used site search last quarter, yet search functionality influenced 16% of orders. Considering the fact that search-driven shoppers convert at a higher rate, businesses should want these numbers to be a lot higher. Fortunately, a few key strategies can help. 

Give intentional shoppers what they need: a prominent search bar.

One recent study performed by To The Web found that by simply exposing the search box more prominently, businesses can increase usage by up to 4 times. By elevating the visibility of site search, brands increase the probability of engaging highly intentional shoppers and bringing them into a purchasing journey. If you’re in the middle of holiday planning and wondering which small tweaks can make a big impact on ecommerce success, start by adopting a simple, common sense approach to site search.

Site search innovation with AI to drive success

The keyword era is ending. For years, businesses tried to uncover and decipher the right keywords to assign to their products so they could influence search engines. And for years, shoppers tried to guess the right words and phrases to type into search bars that would yield results relevant to their product needs. But generative AI is changing all that.

Shoppers want answers, not results. With generative AI, you can enhance the search experience. For example, you can implement visual search — which allows shoppers to search for products using images instead of text. Or you can add voice search, which offers a hands-free approach that will likely grow in popularity with the mobile-first shoppers. 

Large language models and conversational commerce are also changing the way shoppers search. Keywords are out. Fully formed sentences using natural language are in. Now, shoppers’ intentionality can be expressed in full sentences — and yield high-converting results. Instead of keywords, shoppers can enter prompts like, “I’m looking for a gift for my in-laws. I’d like to spend between $100 and $150. They live in the Florida Keys and like fishing.”

The way we shop is changing. Is your site search ready? 

Retailers are in the thick of holiday planning. By making adjustments to your site search strategy now, you can reap large rewards during peak shopping season and beyond. Intelligent, intuitive commerce platforms with built-in search indexes, sorting rules, and search refinement can help. You can also implement a search copilot to make onsite search optimization easy for your merchandising team. 

Vinod Kumar, former Head of Business Insights at Salesforce Commerce Cloud and current CEO of Syntheum AI, brings deep expertise in ecommerce and data analytics. Syntheum AI is the first Digital Merchandising Platform that works natively with Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud to increase merchandising speed, improve merchandiser productivity, and unlock merchandiser capacity.

Learn more about Syntheum AI and how they aim to bring joy back to digital merchandising here - https://syntheum.ai

Caila Schwartz is the director of consumer insights and strategy for retail and consumer goods at Salesforce. Her background includes extensive data analysis and storytelling, and her main focus is giving retailers a competitive edge by identifying new opportunities based on data-driven evidence. She has been with Salesforce since 2014. Caila is a graduate of Wellesley College.