Site Search Best Practices – Pubcon 2017 Las Vegas

© 2017 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

Best Practices to Improve Site SearchDavid Lloyd, Principal Consultant


About me

Dave helps Adobe Marketing Cloud customers in their digital transformations and performance. He has 17 years of experience in digital marketing, including serving as the Senior Manager of Global Search Marketing at Adobe

where his team delivered strategies for organic, site, and app store search.

Twitter: @davelloyd1


Agenda

Tips to optimize

search

experiences

Best practices

from industry

leaders

Search strategy

on Adobe.com


Unsuccessful experiences hurt your business

68% of customers are unlikely to

return to a website that does not provide a

satisfactory customer experienceForrester 2015


Primary Site Search Goal: Increase scope and accuracy of results to drive traffic to most

relevant content

Vision: Optimize the search journey to deliver a better visitor experience

Strategic

Map strategy to entire

customer journey

Relevant

Content and results must

focus on customer

satisfaction

Comprehensive

Deliver best practices

consistently


Brand Examples


Improve the

conversion rate of

the search box and

increase traffic from

it

Reduce the time for

visitors to find

relevant results and

guide them in

finding those results

more easily

Improve relevance

to prioritize the

search results from

the many products

and content on your

site

Capture or illustrate

the value of search

to justify investing

capital, labor, and

time

Site Search Challenges

7


How to optimize the search journey for your visitors

CREATE a search box that invites visitors to search

ASSIST visitors using linguistics and prediction

FILTER the results with refinements to learn the explicit intent of

visitors

DELIVER relevant results that also align with your business strategy






visitors




The search box is the entry point of the search journey.

A great search box will encourage your site visitors to search.

The search box design should integrate seamlessly with your website branding.


Search box example - Adobe

Search box should be:• Easily accessible• Relevant to the visitor’s location on the

website (different search box for Main vs. Store vs. Support)


Search box example - Amazon

Source: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160614006063/en/Products-Amazon-Carry-Categories

Amazon places its search box on the top of the page, so

visitors can find what they need from over 350 million

products.


Search box example - Lego

Lego locates its search box at the top right of the page,

and includes a prompt of “Search” inside.


Search box example - Accenture

Accenture creates a search page on top of the main

page and displays the search results without redirecting

the visitors to another result page.






visitors




Revisit the frequently used search terms and terms that return no results to iteratively learn about your visitors’ search experience.

Shorten your visitors’ time to search results to create a smooth search experience.

Consider and accommodate the various terms a visitor unfamiliar with your site might use to search for products/content.


Search input assistance example - Auto-Complete

Auto-complete helps the visitors to enter their ideas with

only partial input. It shortens the time for the visitors to

complete the entire search term, and improve the search

experience on your site, especially for visitors on mobile

devices.


Search input assistance example - Auto-Correct

Spelling can challenge searchers for many reasons. Use

autocorrect with search terms to save visitors time and

offer a smoother experience. Imagine how frustrated

visitors would become if they entered a typo when

searching on a small mobile device and received a

response of “No Results.”


Assist visitors through relevant results

Search as you type should be easy to select

Data-driven approach to search suggestions

Always optimize through a quarterly audit and refining top terms (80/20 rules)

Input welcome from product stakeholders to adapt frequently


Search input assistance example - Synonym

Terminology can vary widely for people of different

backgrounds, but you want them to have the same

experience. For example, the terms “UK” and “England”

should return the same search results.


Search input assistance example - Search as you type for product site

Grainger provides auto-complete and search as you type

at the same time to guide their visitors to explore its site.






visitors



Visitors reveal their intent on your site; if that intent is not clear enough, narrow it down.

Guide your visitors toward more clearly revealing their intent using the information you have.

Categorize search results based on content/product type, source, and so on to help your visitors learn your site’s structure and your products/content.

FILTER the results with refinements to learn the explicit intent of visitors


Filtering example - dynamic refinement criteria

With more than 350 million products, Amazon has

a very dynamic and detailed refinement for each

category.


Filtering example - dynamic refinement criteria (contd.)


Refinement results align to customer journey

Align to the customer journey

Data and results drive CTA links

Change and adapt as needed

Merchandise based on revealed intent

• New customer

• Current customer

Current Customer

New Customer


Make it easy to narrow down

Filters• Relevance and recency• Site (All, Support, Community)• Product filters

Refinement philosophy:1. Be data-driven where possible2. Consider the customer intent3. Take into account the customer

journey4. Continually optimize

Product Filters

Site

Relevance & Recency


Filtering example - static refinement criteria

If your products share the same metadata, you

can use the same refinement for all the products.


Filtering example - sort options

Lego provides various sort options for site

visitors. Some of its most common options are

relevance, newest to oldest, price low to high/high

to low, rating, best selling, and most viewed.

Depending on your type of data, you can

customize your sort options. Also, be sure to test

and prioritize the sort options based on the

conversion rates they deliver.






visitors



Control the relevance setting to prioritize search results and use the results page to meet business needs.

Promote content or products beyond the exact results your visitors may be looking for.

Insert, remove, or bias search results with business rules to align with your business goals.

Adjust the balance between your relevance setting and the business rules you define.



Results page example - prioritizing ads and best selling products

“Sponsored” and “Best Seller” products are prioritized.


Lead customers based on the overall brand story

Represent the brand story in search

Highlight recent partnerships or developments

Offer guidance to reduce needless clicks


Intent should closely match content and assets

Data guides the results

Utilize video results where possible

Include relevant content


Results page example - prioritizing NEW products

New products are prioritized higher with multiple-result

sets.


If Site Search doesn’t deliver ideal results yet

• Do you have the ear of a dedicated executive sponsor?

• Does Site Search have a dedicated owner with incentive to improve performance?

• Are both business and technical team members engaged?

• Do stakeholders set it and forget it?

People

• Regular strategy meetings with the core team who cares about Site Search results?

• Is Site Search seen as a strategic initiative?

• Consistent re-optimization focusing on highest impact terms?

• Do you map to the entire customer journey?

Process Technology

• Does the Search platform enable advanced features?

• Does data support making changes to Site Search?

• Are the right KPIs being measured to get leverage for Site Search changes?


Site Search audit (Ex. 1) - Hypothesis for the biggest impact from Site

SearchOBSERVATIONS RECOMMENDATIONS & DISCUSSION POINTS KPIS IMPACTED

Simplify discovery

and consideration

User guidance sub-optimal in search results when

search is not spot-on

• Did You Mean alternatives are non-

existent

• User intent not captured consistently with

intent or symptom searches

• Missed opportunities for null results

• Promote alternative results where search query renders an

inaccurate result

• Evaluate Site Search CSAT scores to gauge further

improvements to user experience

• Digital channel sales

• E-channel referrals

• Increase visit depth

• CSAT

Broader search

intent support

Significant misses helping customers when search

query is too high in funnel or uninformed

• Intent-driven queries do not fulfill the

CTA as well as possible

• Subjective searches, seasonal searches,

and Feature or Symbol searches are not

supported

• Expand on results description, similar to Rich Snippets

• More robust synonym dictionary and Did You Mean or

misspell functionality

• Consider results for subjective terms without a clear answer

• Better use of promotions and banners or images in search

results

• Null results

• Reduce bounces

• Conversion & AOV

• CSAT

Align multiple

search engines

Inconsistency between all 4 search indexes (Main,

Store, Support, Ink cartridges)

• Consider aligning results for all search engines, especially

Store & Support index which are drastically different.

• Brand perception


• Search bounce rates

• Support costs

Improve Store

search

‘Add Product to Compare’ is not intuitive as

Compare button is not easy to see

Store Filters default to either open or closed – has

this been tested?

• Consider testing use of open or closed filters

• Consider radio buttons (OR) rather than all checkboxes (AND)



CATEGORY

ITEM BEST PRACTICE

ASSESSMENT

DISCUSSION POINTS

Search Form &

Logic (SEARCH

BOX)

Guidelines on the design and behavior

of the search field itself, query

persistence, search scope selection

Positioned to emphasize the importance of search

while persisting the user’s query in the search field

and enabling Search As You Type and

Autocomplete results to be quickly navigated

Overall the experience is positive but

there are best practice opps to reduce

friction and improve user engagement

Broad Query Types

(LINGUISTICS &

PREDICTION)

Types of search queries that users make

on e-commerce sites and that your

search engine should support

Support various queries including exact search,

synonyms, acronyms, products, ‘Did you Mean’

Missed opportunities to capture broader

user intent throughout the customer

journey

Autocomplete

(LINGUISTICS &

PREDICTION)

On autocomplete suggestions; how they

should be designed, what should be

suggested, keyboard behavior

Additional query suggestions load quickly and

reassure the user to enable exploration and

probing

Works effectively for most queries with

combo of All and Store

Results Logic &

Guidance

(REFINEMENT)

How to guide users toward better paths,

including suggesting new queries,

scopes, ‘No results’ pages

Alternate queries suggested limited ‘no results’

dead ends or spelling errors and pointing them to

near-perfect search scopes including filtering and

sorting options

Multiple null results queries with no ‘did

you mean’ option, no support for

misspells, no filtering support for one-off

queries

Filtering & Sorting

(REFINEMENT)

Filtering and sorting of search results,

including the needed filtering types,

faceted search, truncation, filter naming,

dynamic sorting

Faceted search offers category-specific filters for

site-wide searches based on the user’s search

query and ensures users have sufficient sorting

options

Dynamic sorting based on query and

consistent use of single and multi-select

facets

Results Layout

(DELIVER

RESULTS)

Layout and features of the search results

page, such as dynamic list layouts,

results information, search snippets, and

pagination

Include contextual search snippets like price,

product name, thumbnails, user ratings, etc. to help

users know how each result relates to their query

Store search results have strong product

detail information and compare function.

All HP results give appropriate array &

variety

Site Search audit (Ex. 2) -- Site Search opportunities






visitors



Primary Site Search Goal: Increase scope and accuracy of results to drive traffic to most

relevant content

Vision: Optimize the search journey to deliver a better visitor experience

Strategic

Map strategy to entire

customer journey

Relevant

Content and results must

focus on customer

satisfaction

Comprehensive

Deliver best practices

consistently


Thank you.

Twitter: @davelloyd1