Is Your E-Commerce Platform Selling You Short With On-Site Search and Product Discovery?

Every customer experience counts. With search-led journeys on the up, is your platform’s native functionality up to scratch? This article will outline three key ways in which a specialist on-site search solution can help to put you ahead of the competition. Ensure successful, satisfying product discovery every time (and benefit from a wealth of helpful new customer data) to elevate your brand to the next level.

Your platform’s basic functionality vs. a specialist solution: when it comes to on-site search, there’s no contest.

Looking for a way to give yourself an instant edge over 85% of your competition? Only 15% of companies are currently dedicating resources to improving their on-site search experience.

In today’s e-commerce climate, it’s not enough to provide an ‘adequate’ customer experience. Online retailers looking to set themselves apart from their competitors know they need to optimize each element of their customer journey.

On-site search and enhanced product discovery is the smart place to start upping your game. Customers interacting with this feature of your store are indicating a high level of purchase intent (studies have shown site searchers are over 200% more likely to convert than other customers).

By improving their experience and chance of finding the perfect product — beyond the basic functionality offered by your e-commerce platform — you’re fully capitalizing on this motivation.

Read on to learn why a specialist on-site search provider blows native functionality out of the water.

 1. Hands Off the Wheel: The Power of AI

When it comes to making impactful improvements to your e-commerce outcomes, the smart money is increasingly on AI and machine learning.

When applied to on-site search, AI runs undetectably in the background, enabling incremental improvements with no manual work.

Native Functionality

The major e-commerce platforms are starting to embrace AI in elements of their offering (for example, Shopify’s marketing assistant app, Kit). But when it comes to search, e-commerce platforms can’t offer this with their built-in functionality.

You might be able to fine-tune the experience to some degree, but you’ll need to apply your own research and commit to a great deal of manual work.

The Advantage of a Specialist Solution

By working with a third-party expert, you have access to the exponential power of AI-driven, specialist technology.

Klevu’s sophisticated on-site search solution applies advanced algorithmic intelligence to make the process truly self-learning.

As customers interact with your products, data is gathered, analyzed and acted on. The result? Your store is continuously optimized for product discovery and higher conversion.

Klevu’s advanced AI extends to product discovery, by enabling Smart Category Navigation. This powerful functionality unlocks automated merchandising of category pages, visual merchandising for those hero SKUs, dynamic facets and much more.

To achieve this without an algorithmic leg up would be virtually impossible. With Klevu, the process is effortless.

The Key Benefits

• Self-learning, constantly improving on-site search.
• Enhanced customer experience, leading to increased conversion.
• Better product discovery, boosting your AOV.

2. Automated Catalog Enrichment and NLP

When it comes to delivering a seamless experience for eager searchers, your store must successfully interpret their intentions.

Expectations in this area are always rising. The spike in voice search (2 in 5 adults use voice search once daily) also means that more colloquial or conversational search terms are common, and tolerance for irrelevant results is falling.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this mission with on-site search. But again, to benefit fully from the strategy, you need to be working with Klevu’s advanced functionality.

Native Functionality

When helping your customer find the exact product they were searching for, it’s a smart move to enrich your catalog with a wide variety of product synonyms. This means the correct item is likely to show up in results, no matter how your customer phrases their query.

For the major e-commerce platforms, adding these synonyms to improve your search experience is a time consuming, hit and miss manual affair.

The Advantage of a Specialist Solution

When working with a specialist like Klevu, your catalog is instantly and automatically enriched with a vast repository of thousands of alternative names, phrases, misspellings and more.

Additionally, leveraging the advanced functionality of a third-party solution means access to next-level interpretation, via Natural Language Processing (NLP). Learn more about how Klevu makes sure searches are successful and satisfying every time.

The Key Benefits

• Effortless catalog enrichment.
• Better search success, regardless of input.
• Improved customer experience, fast paths to conversion.

3. Advanced Personalization

When it comes to customer experience, it pays to get personal. From suggested products on PDPs through to smart recommendations in your retargeting campaigns, applying personalization to your on-site search experience unlocks huge potential.

Native Functionality

The major e-commerce platforms are well aware of the power of personalization. But at this stage in the game they’re still focused on providing solid, generalist foundations — there’s no dedicated focus on applying nuanced personalization to on-site search.

The Advantage of a Specialist Solution

Platforms’ standard capacity simply cannot live up to Klevu’s personalization functionality.

Javascript monitors what each customer is searching for and viewing. Semantic and statistical analysis of this data is performed, helping to paint a clear picture of their individual intent. As their interaction with your store increases, their profile of preference is continuously refined.

What does this mean? A shopping experience that delivers on the products your customers knew they wanted, while cross-selling highly relevant and exceptionally appealing extras to bump up AOV.

The Key Benefits

• Deeper understanding of your customers’ behavior
• Boosted customer loyalty resulting from personalized experience
• Access to additional data to benefit marketing campaign segmentation

Ready to Graduate From Native On-Site Search?

With e-commerce marketplaces holding increasing sway over modern shopping habits, search-led customer journeys are becoming far more common.

Shoppers expect to be able to locate the item they have in mind quickly and accurately.

The increase in both use and expectation of on-site search means you need to seriously consider the level of finesse your platform allows you to provide.

While the major platforms are moving forward, their commitment is to overall functionality. Improvements to on-site search will always be incremental.

Working with a dedicated on-site search solution like Klevu means access to the constant innovation and specialist focus you need to meet the rising expectations of today’s customers.

Is your platform’s on-site search capacity selling you short? Schedule a demo today to see how Klevu can transform your customer experience. Book your demo today.