“Product not found”: we analyze the intricacies of searching the site

We will send the material to you by email:


    Время чтения: 5 мин.

    The search bar on the site should help sales, not frustrate them.

    Often, when creating your online store or website, some of the important details are simply overlooked or underestimated. A striking example of this is the search bar on the site. In order not to lose potential customers due to poor or lack of search, it is important to understand what features the search string should have.

    Needed or not needed? That is the question

    Site search is a feature that will help users of a particular resource easily find the content they need. If your site has more than 100 pages, this feature is a must. Internet marketers often argue like this – no search is needed, because easy navigation and grouping by categories and tags is enough. Such a thought is wrong.

    First of all, your resource is intended for a user who does not have time to understand navigation. He needs to quickly find his product at this moment. Everything is simple here – the person did not find the desired content, the person left. And it doesn’t matter that you have a suitable product, article, service, and so on. He has already gone.

    Understand everything – from huawei to laptop

    Now consider the situation from the other side. Let’s say the site has a search bar. And she seems to be working. But something is wrong. A client came to your resource from contextual advertising on the request “buy a phone”. And when he got to the site, he found hundreds of offers. He is interested in a specific Apple model. He goes to your search and enters the name the way he remembers, the way he likes – iPhone, Apple, ifone – there can be many options (according to Multisearch.io statistics, 10-15% of users enter queries with errors). The search answers – this product was not found. The client is lost. And it does not matter that you have a model that he was interested in at a nice price. And most likely he will remember that there is no phone number of interest to him on your site. 61% of users will not return to an inconvenient site, and another 40% will look for a new one. The money you spent on advertising is wasted.

    To prevent this from happening, the search on the site should:

    1. Understand typos

    When entering the product name, the user may make a grammatical error or accidentally click in the wrong place without even noticing it. In order not to lose such a visitor, the search must determine what exactly the user wants. What errors should search recognize:

    • misprint;
    • permutation of letters;
    • doubling the letter and vice versa its absence;
    • writing multiple words together.

    2. Know the mighty Russian language

    “Laptop bag”, “Laptop bag”, “Laptop bag” – the meaning is the same, the spelling is different. The search should find the product regardless of the case, number or declension in which the query is written.

    3. Understand queries entered on the wrong keyboard layout

    Familiar situation – entered a request without switching the keyboard to the desired language? When you use Google or Yandex, this does not make the search process particularly difficult. But search inside sites rarely have the ability to understand such abracadabra. To make life easier for visitors, search should be able to do that too.

    4. Know transliteration

    Agree, not everyone knows how to write samsung and huawei in the original. The search should equally understand English words in Russian letters and vice versa.

    5. Know synonyms

    Laptop and laptop, smartphone and mobile phone, plasma and TV – you have no idea how many different words people can search for the same product.

    6. Help you improve your product range

    A good search can show you what users searched for but didn’t find. So you can expand your range of popular goods and services.

    Important: The search should be visible and easy to use both from the phone and from the computer.

    You can develop such search engine abilities yourself or install a ready-made solution on your site.

    How to make your search smarter: installation features

    If you do not have the opportunity to develop a search engine, you can use a ready-made solution. Consider the features of installing a search engine using the example of smart search Multisearch.io

    The search engine can be installed through a plugin or integrated via API. To begin with, a programmer or site developer must upload goods or site content, which will then index the search. It is important that everything you need is included in the download. You must specify the price, visual, description, name and link to the category. According to these parameters, the search will search, and the search results will contain categories, name, visual, price and status “in stock”.

    Next, you need to send the feed to the Multisearch.io developers. After that, within 2 hours, you will be sent a finished line of JavaScript code, which must be written on all pages of the site before the closing </head> tag. This is done in the same way as installing the Google Analytics code. You can also use Google Tag Manager for installation.

    After you write the code, the search on your site will immediately become smart.

    And to make search look like a native string, it is worth integrating via API. In this case, you will be given a ranked list of product IDs and you yourself will be able to display the results in a convenient format.

    If you want to make your site search smarter, contact Multisearch.io

    Using the promo code https://multisearch.io/?promo_code=mr-30, you can try the search features for free for a month.

    4.6/5 - (5 votes)