Why internal site search is important for your business

When prospects visit your website, they expect to be able to find relevant, contextual, personalized information quickly and easily. Ecosystems that provide these experiences via internal site search engines perform better in many major areas—longer time-on-site, more repeat visitors, more conversions, and higher customer satisfaction.

On average, companies spend 4% of total sales revenue on paid media and SEO to drive brand awareness and attract customers. But once a prospective customer is on the site, many businesses don’t offer the relevance and context that’s needed to cater to their specific needs and convince them to convert.

With that kind of investment in awareness and attention, organizations should spend the same amount on making sure consumers can find what they’re looking for when they get there.

It becomes a business imperative to focus on intelligent site-search results.

Facilitates conversions and loyalty

Research shows that consumers who use internal site search are much more likely to convert—up to 50% more likely.

This is primarily because these people know what they want, and they tell you explicitly what that is when they type it in the search field. If you give them accurate search results, they’re already inclined to put that product in their cart.

In addition to conversions, good site-search experiences are also important for user satisfaction and, in turn, customer loyalty. Today’s consumers have very little patience for inaccurate or delayed results. A bad experience can send them to a competitor’s site in a heartbeat.

Captures valuable data

The words consumers type into a site-search field—and the pages they’re on when they type them—can give you great insight into your customers’ intent. In addition to the terms searched, a typical site-search report can also tell you:

• Pages where users initiated a search

• Pages viewed and how long they stayed after a search

• Percentage who left the site after a search

You can use this information to improve your website for all your customers. For example, based on what you learn, you can improve your site’s navigation and optimize the content on your homepage.

The bottom line

Many companies don’t spend a lot of time or money on internal site search because its value isn’t always understood. Budgets for improving it can be scarce.

But you don’t need a team of full-stack data scientists and data engineers to provide a great search experience. A SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution can be easily integrated with your existing infrastructure and run with your site without any changes to your hardware.

Once your internal site search is correctly set, the value will speak for itself. 

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