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Jul. 16, 2013

Sameer Maggon

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2 min. read

It’s one of the greatest fears of an online retailer: you’ve got a potential customer, you’ve got the product they want, and you can’t get the two of them together.  It seems that no matter how you name and describe your product, it’s not selling. You suspect that the potential customer is looking for it by another name or description. When they can’t find it with a quick site search on your website, they move on, and you’ve lost the chance to make that sale.

What can you do in a case like this? In a brick and mortar store, a personal discussion with a salesperson can quickly solve this dilemma, but you don’t have that option online. Fortunately, site search analytics are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it is now possible to address this issue by “listening in” on the conversation that your potential customer is having with your website.

First of all, site search analytics can now track what potential customers are looking for, and whether their searches yield any results. This is critical information, because if you don’t know what words potential customers are using to search, you cannot align those words with items matching those descriptions. For example, if you sell “Irish woven sweaters,” but the unsuccessful search record shows that your customers are looking for “wool cardigans”, you now have a window into your customers’ minds and can add these critical keywords to your product description.

Secondly, such analytics can highlight what customers are not looking for, which can be just as important as what they are seeking. If information on your website is irrelevant to your customers, you need to know this and make critical decisions about whether those products should no longer remain in inventory, or whether they need a virtual facelift because, under another name, they would be found and snapped up in a heartbeat.

Thirdly, rates, volumes and trends are as relevant with online sales as they are with brick and mortar stores, and site search analytics will reveal these important facts as well. By watching daily, weekly and monthly trends, you will be able to catch the rising waves of online retail shopping trends, rather than trying to catch up when the wave has crested and is breaking upon the shore.

So if you’re ready to get your lost products found by eager customers, contact us today to learn more about our powerful search analytics platform.

By Sameer Maggon

VP, Product

"This makes it clear that marketing should fully own the digital experience - starting from when a student lands on the website to explore and first learn about offerings all the way through collecting their cap and gown."

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