A STRANGE TITLE YOU MIGHT THINK FOR AN ARTICLE, BUT IT’LL BECOME CLEAR LATER…
Many households during the last few months have seen an increase in the amount of home baking going on and ours has been no different. The shouts of “Can I do some baking?” have been coming regularly from my kids, and thankfully a local bakery has been able to keep us well supplied with flour, and a local pub has supplied us with yeast.
The fresh bread and cakes have been a welcome addition to the tea breaks, but a recent broken electric whisk has limited some of the recipes unfortunately, and my search for a new one has in in turn led me to write this piece….
Throughout the year and especially at this time of year, there are days and holidays where you know, with certainty, that traffic and conversion will increase (hello Black Friday). The question is, how do you ensure shoppers on your mobile and ecommerce sites will actually find what they’re looking for, or be inspired enough by your shopping experiences to complete their purchase? If you consider the path a frenzied and frantic shopper might take when they’re deal hunting, making a last-minute time-sensitive purchase, or seeking out a specific item, especially on mobile, you might conclude (and accurately) that they’ll take the fastest route possible. And the fastest route possible should be Search.
Commerce search has emerged as a major experience battleground for Holiday 2019 and beyond. As technology and customer expectations evolve, traditional approaches no longer make the grade. Writing in July, Forrester Research counseled digital leaders to re-vamp site search and adopt cutting-edge search technologies – or risk customer relationships.
Site search is a top priority for shoppers and retailers this holiday. A recent survey found that almost all shoppers (86%) agree that the search box is important, even extremely important, when shopping online. Eight in 10 always or often use site search when shopping, and the vast majority (72%) are likely to leave a retail site that doesn’t provide good search results.
Holidays raise the stakes. In fact, half of all shoppers (48%) rank the ability to “easily search and find products” as the single most important factor when shopping for gifts on a retailer’s site (vs. 5% who pick out marketing-driven features such as curated gift ideas).
As Forrester just noted, digital experience teams are investing in site search – and re-vamping this critical feature can bring major benefits (see our July 26 blog post). As part of their upgrade efforts, digital leaders are marrying personalization and search in order to present shoppers with an individualized experience. The rewards are significant: online marketplace Swap.com saw an initial ‘out of the box’ conversion increase of 7.3% from personalized search – the biggest conversion increase Swap.com has ever seen as the result of introducing a new tech capability.
Swap.com, Riachuelo and Other Digital Leaders Increase Conversion & Sales with RichRelevance FINDTM
Shop.org 2018 – Las Vegas, NV – September 13, 2018 – RichRelevance, the global leader in Experience Personalization, today announced that B2B and B2C leaders continue to switch to RichRelevance FIND™, the industry’s only true personalized search solution. With 8 in 10 shoppers always or often using search while shopping, and 7 in 10 likely to leave a retail site that doesn’t provide good search results, companies who prioritize commerce search are turning to FIND in record numbers to drive double-digit digital revenue growth.
When Riachuelo sat down to create their first-ever eCommerce experience, the largest Brazilian fast-fashion retailer wanted to deliver a cutting-edge personalized experience that would dynamically prioritize shoppers individual preferences at scale. To deliver on this concept, Riachuelo sought a flexible solution that would dynamically combine internal expertise with the implicit contextual signals derived from the customer journey to make good on the promise of a unique and individualized shopping experience.
Search is one of the most essential components of a personalized experience, which can drive up to 45% of e-commerce revenue. Yet despite its importance, site search has barely evolved in a decades time. With a focus on customer experience and personalized interactions many retailers and brands have taken steps to improve the experiences they offer at every touch point and many have come to recognize how challenged their current Search deployments are for both the consumer and the business user. Infact, most legacy Search technologies require heavy lifting from IT or dev teams and leave business users frustrated by a lack of flexibility and inability to make real time improvements.