Site search-bronto

2. Copyright © 2017
Something Digital will be talking about its own products and/or
services, which it makes available directly to customers. The
statements and opinions contained herein are those of
Something Digital and not of Oracle. Oracle has not verified any
statements or claims herein and assumes no responsibility for
such statements or claims.
CAUTIONARY NOTE:

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DITCH THE RABBIT HOLE:
HOW TO MAKE SITE SEARCHES CUSTOMER-FRIENDLY
#brontosummit

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PHILLIP JACKSON
Ecommerce Evangelist - Something Digital

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WHAT THIS TALK IS ABOUT
• Discovery and desire
• Analysis
• An exploration of business capability and maturity
• Beyond the catalog
• Changing consumer expectations

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DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

9. Discovery
Analysis
Maturity
Capability
Fakingit

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DISCOVERY

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• Do you need search?
• Size of catalog
• Diversity of product offering
• Can you avoid search investment in favor of better UI/UX or
clever merchandising?
DISCOVERY STARTS WITH ASKING "WHY"

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• Requires ongoing investment, curation
• Creates additional customer touchpoints (e.g. call center
fielding support requests)
• User input is a vector for security issues
SEARCH IS A RABBIT HOLE

13. 🚫 🚫

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• Search converts higher when:
• Customers are motivated
• Search is visible and accessible
• Results are relevant
WHY SITE SEARCH MATTERS

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• Search converts lower when:
• Users can't find it
• It’s hard to use
• Returns irrelevant results
WHY SITE SEARCH MATTERS

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• Results, catalog, user intent change over time
• End-user devices evolve new capabilities, conventions,
standards and vocabularies (e.g. Responsive Web,
Progressive Web)
• Customer expectations continue to heighten
WE HAVE TO PURPOSELY INVEST IN SEARCH

17. https://conversionxl.com/convert-visitors-improving-internal-site-search/
Even though only 10% of
customers used search
it accounted for over
40% of total revenue

18. https://econsultancy.com/reports/site-search-report
Fewer than 15% of businesses
have dedicated resources to
improve on-site search

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ANALYSIS

20. “We can’t improve what we can’t measure”
- Wayne Gretzky
- Michael Scott

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• How do you measure your conversion rate?
AUDIENCE Q&A:

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TRICK QUESTION

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THE ANSWER IS "WHICH CONVERSION RATE?"

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• First/repeat, registered/guest
• Referring channel conversion (e.g. paid, organic, social,
affiliates, display)
• Search type - paid, natural, brand, long-tail
• Product category type (high ticket items, commodities)
• Promotional/seasonality
THERE ISN’T ONE SINGULAR
CONVERSION RATE

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• Tracking segmented conversion rate allows us to test and
target improvements more accurately
• We can target other efforts with great efficacy:
• "improve site search" vs "improve search results for
returning paid display ad visitors"
• Requires communication across teams and disciplines
THERE ISN'T ONE CONVERSION RATE FOR
ON-SITE SEARCH EITHER

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USING DATA CAN BE A DIFFERENTIATOR
http://sitesearch.sli-systems.com/Survey-2013-11-11-Global-eCommerce-US-Registration-Page.html
Don't use site search data for marketing programs
Create SEO landing pages with site search results/banners
Integrate search data into email marketing
Regular site search powers mobile
Integrate banners into search results
Integrate search with social channels
Integrate search results into display ads 10%
11%
11%
13%
24%
26%
56%

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CAPABILITY

29. At Something Digital we measure feature
functionality as a function of business maturity

30. EfforttoMaintain
Feature-Completeness
InstantSearch+
Klevu
Certona
SLI
SearchSpring
On Premise

31. CosttoOperatevsROI
Feature-Completeness
InstantSearch+
Klevu
Certona
SLI
SearchSpring
On Premise

32. Small
Catalog
Small Team
Loads of Traffic
Small Budget
Content Search
Personalization
Integration with
Channels
Compliance
Business Digital Maturity
ValueprovidedbySaaS

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• Typeahead
• Layered/filter results
• Deep link to filtered results
• Dashboards/reports
• Manual curation
BASELINE CAPABILITIES

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• Learns taxonomy
• Suggests misspellings
• Merchandise “no results” page
• Target promotions
• Feed other channels (e.g. social, email)
INTERMEDIATE CAPABILITIES

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• Content/document search
• Personalization
• Test/target
• Suggestion of segmentation
• Feed data profiles via other sources
ADVANCED CAPABILITIES

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• Pre-fill popular searches
• Draw attention to search with motion, keyboard focus
• Capture keyboard input directly to the search
• Display images for product results
• Segment result types
UI CONSIDERATIONS

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RESULTS DISPLAY
Bad Good

41. "The time has come," the Walrus
said, "To talk of many things: Of
shoes—and ships—and sealing-
wax— Of cabbages—and kings
— And why the sea is boiling hot
— And whether pigs have wings."
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll

42. "The time has come," the Walrus
said, "To talk of many things: Of
shoes—and ships—and sealing-
wax— Of cabbages—and kings
— And why the sea is boiling hot
— And whether pigs have wings."
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll

43. "The time has come," the Walrus
said, "To talk of many things: Of
shoes—and ships—and sealing-
wax— Of cabbages—and kings
— And why the sea is boiling hot
— And whether pigs have wings."
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
Walrus
ships sealing-
wax cabbages kings
boiling
pigs wings

44. “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
Walrus
ships sealing-
wax cabbages kings
boiling
pigs wings

45. “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, Through the Looking Glass, Carroll
Walrus ships sealing-wax
cabbages kings
boiling pigs wings

46. Results:
“The Walrus and the Carp…
walrus

47. oyster
No results found.

48. carpenter
No results found.

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• Unindexed content / synonyms
• Custom taxonomy
• Acquisition sources
• Content/commerce
CHALLENGES

50. Lewis Carroll Mome Raths
Outgrabe Jabberwocky
Mimsy Brillig

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FAKING IT

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Over-curating synonyms
Redirecting brand terms results to
brand pages
Creating purpose-built categories
instead of leveraging search filters,
deep links
UN-PAINTING THE ROSES
Inevitable terms overlap leads to
confusing results
Loss of search results data and
clickthrough
Categories go away/change urls,
search is constant

53. “My site looks like IRCE threw up all over it”

54. Any strength, overextended, becomes a weakness

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• Not every feature works for every site
• “Sponsoritis” leads to confusion of brand and unclear
objectives for customers
• Letting your competitors set your direction or agenda
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES

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• Speed to market is important, but it’s
only one of many factors
• Once you adopt a solution it’s harder
to migrate away, take time making
the right business decision
• Perform a 3-year TCO calculation
DON’T FORGET OPPORTUNITY COST

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• Vendors and platforms sell on
“plug-and-play” but that’s not
how it works in the real world
• Temper expectations and
focus on delivery
• Set realistic goals
SETTING EXPECTATIONS

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STAY ON-GOAL

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MATURITY

61. out of the box
features
guided
navigation
sorting and
filtering
Integral part
of marketing
strategy,
query
processing,
relevancy
tuning
sophisticated
statistical
mapping,
engine
scoring,
monitored
results
segmented
conversion
rates and
revenue by
channel.
shared data
across org.
personalization
THE COMMERCE SEARCH MATURITY MODEL

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EXAMPLE ROI CALCULATION
Site Visitors using
Search
87,164 2.7% of Total
Site Search
Conversion
5.32%
AOV $129
Site Search
Revenue
$598,234 8.6% of Total

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EXAMPLE ROI CALCULATION
Total Project Implementation Cost $9,000.00
1 Year SaaS Platform Fees $6,000.00
$15,500.00Total:
Breakeven at ~8 Months
Increase Conversion to 5.42% (^1.88%)
100 Additional Searches/Mo (UI Treatment)
$1,129.00/mo
$684/mo
$14,504.00Total:

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• As a business matures marketing matures, personalization
encapsulates functionalities of on-site search
• Search reaches beyond direct to consumer
• Cross-discipline:
• Amazon search
• Enterprise search
• More…
A SUBSET OF PERSONALIZATION

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DITCH THE RABBIT HOLE

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• Business maturity affects solution choice
• Measure your business maturity
• Choose your solution carefully
• Employ data from across the organization
• Match capabilities with business maturity
• Create detailed plan and set goals
RECAP

68. “I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this
morning, but it’s no use going back to yesterday,
because I was a different person then.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll

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THANKS!
(it’s okay to clap)

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Q&A