Ecommerce Blog

What makes for great site search?

Here are 22 features to consider to optimize your site search tool for usability, guided selling and customer satisfaction.

Search Box

1. Placement
2. Size
3. Scope

Placement

Search boxes should be easy to spot where customers expect them (top right hand corner or top center). Avoid “Search” links in navigation menus – most will scan your page for a box. Also avoid placing email sign-up boxes where a customer expects a search box – they will use it incorrectly! If you must show search and email sign-up close together, include instructions like “enter keywords” or “enter email address.”

Size

Search boxes should be long enough to accommodate longer search terms, it’s easier on your customers when they can see the bulk of their search phrase input before hitting “Search.” 30 characters is a minimum, but you can certainly go bigger.

Scope

Scoped search allows customers to search within a particular section of your site, for example Books vs. Music vs. DVDs. Sounds helpful in theory, but not always necessary. Usability research by Jakob Nielsen from over a decade ago revealed common problems, such as users selecting the wrong category to search within, or users not realizing they are searching within a scoped section, rather then the whole site (especially when one section is selected as the default, rather than “Entire Site.”)

In my opinion, it is better to allow the user to search the entire site, then narrow results by department, as Amazon allows:

One exception – if your store is bolted on to a parent site (as is common in the software industry), it’s a good idea to offer scoped search to allow visitors to search within sections like Discussion Forums, Corporate Info, Product Info and Store.

Search Tools

4. Autosuggest
5. Autocorrect
6. DId you mean?
7. Related searches
8. Search within results
9. Sort by
10. Filtered navigation
11. Advanced search

Autosuggest

Another workaround for scoped search is autosuggest, which reduces typos and helps avoid “zero results found” as suggestions are always for products and categories you carry.

Notice how Apple.com not only scopes results by site section, it also uses “rich autocomplete” by including thumbnail images.

Autocorrect

Rather than show “0 results found,” showing something can reduce abandonment. Tweaking your tool to handle misspellings saves the visitor from entering their search again and shows the “intelligence” of your site, and may instill more confidence in your search tool.

However, autocorrect can fail – for example, “camo” and “cami” are very different but they may be typos of each other. It’s a good idea to state that you don’t have any results, with suggestions of a similar spelled term, than to let the customer think your search has made a mistake.

Did you mean?

If you have many items that are close in spelling, you might opt for “Did you mean?” rather than autocorrect. In my opinion, autocorrect

Related searches

Like autosuggest, related searches links help searchers drill down to more specific terms than they originally typed, and may offer ideas they never thought of

Search within results

Search within results is an “okay to have” but not a must. It’s easy enough for the searcher to go back and enter the refinement into the regular search box. If you are considering building this feature, I suggest using development resources elsewhere.

Keep in mind that searchers may mistake the “search within” box for the real search box. If they enter an unrelated query, they’re likely to get zero results and may leave your site.

Sort by

I’m a huge fan of “sort by” to re-order results based on what the customer values. Some folks are interested in top sellers, some in newest arrivals, some want to see top rated items first and others are price sensitive.

Filtered navigation

I’m an even bigger fan of filtered navigation. Sometimes called “guided search,” filters allow you to guide visitors to product based on product attributes that are important to them such as color, price ranges, brand, gender, size, category/sub-category, style, % off, etc. There’s no limit to how creative you can get with filtered navigation, like “filter by problem:”

It’s a good idea to include the number of results in each sub-facet in (brackets).

My favorite implementation of filters is on ASOS.com, where you can narrow by several attributes at the same time with checkboxes. Results are updated without refresh using AJAX.

Some online shops apply filters to categories but not to search results – don’t be one of them!

Advanced search

Most sites don’t need advanced search if they’ve got good filtered navigation. If your site truly needs advanced search, here are 11 tips for advanced search usability.

Search Results

12. Zero results presentation
13. View all
14. Grid vs. list view
15. Searchandizing
16. Product presentation
17. Quick view / image zoom

Zero results presentation

How you present “zero results found” is important. Contrast a page like this:

With these…

Drugstore.com does not carry the Bumble and Bumble line, but is tweaked to suggest products similar to that brand.

Sears reminds searchers of telephone, live chat and email contact options if customers need a hand, while populating results with products “related to current search.”

Victoria’s Secret acknowledges there were no search results found for “Linda Bustos,” but suggests a few possible corrections, and failing that, shows me the top 10 searches – I just may be interested in.

Of course, a little humor never hurts – if it’s in line with your brand personality…

View all

Rather than clicking through each and every page of results, it’s helpful to have a “view all” link. Every site should have this feature!

Grid vs. list view

Some sites allow you to toggle between grid and list presentation, like Home Depot:

Searchandizing

Merchandising on search pages may include keyword-triggered banners, but can also include features like best-selling items above regular search results.

The term also refers to the way you want your search results presented. Some search tools allow you to apply weighted scores to product conditions, for example, rank results based on relevance [40%], margin [20%], stock level [20%], sales velocity [10%], customer rating [10%]. Veering away from pure relevance-ranking is controversial, but it can produce “better” results, especially if your site search receives a lot of general “head” terms that return a very large number of matching items.

Product presentation

How you present your product listing can have a huge impact on click through. The more information you can expose pre-click, the better the customer can judge which products they want to view.

The worst search presentation I’ve seen in ecommerce is with large enterprise software sites. They are notorious for using Google-style presentation which serves every matching result from the entire site (even when you search only the store), with no demarcation of which are product results and which are documents. This is the extreme example of what not to do:

Newegg has a better presentation for software products – including scannable bullet points that include O/S compatibility, system requirements and return policy, along with a direct add to cart button and price/shipping information.

Radio Shack includes a brief product description, star ratings, stock availability and an “add to wishlist” button.

But presentation really depends on what will sell your product best. Software is different from cosmetics, is different than books, is different than clothing. People shop for apparel visually, and Gap’s extra large thumbnails speak more than bullet point descriptions:

Land’s End allows you to see color swatches and change the color of the thumbnail image right from search results:

QVC highlights video content, comparison tools, special offers like “Try Me Price” and persuasive value propositions like “Over 1 Million Sold” and “Customer Favorite.”

Endless includes sale prices in red and applicable shipping promos:

There’s many ways you can pimp your results presentation. Whenever possible, include price/sale price, thumbnail images and star ratings. Then, ask yourself these questions:

Choose your presentation features according to the products you sell, and use the above as inspiration.

Quick view

Quick look tools allow you to view details without leaving the search page.

It’s essentially a fully functional, pop-up product page.

Bonus features

18. Autoappend
19. Saved searches
20. Discussions
21. Subscribe by RSS
22. Check store availability

Autoappend

An alternative to paginated results and view all links, Backcountry.com autoappends results with more results when you reach the end of the page. No clicks required. The only downside is it can take a long time to scroll back to the top.

Saved searches

For some sites, saved search is a nice to have, like Endless.com (below), for others, it’s crucial – think B2B and complex sales that require product configuration.

Discussions

Apple.com and Sears integrate support and community content alongside product results. While this may clutter the page and reduce click through, it also exposes the depth of content the site offers that can support the purchase decision.

Subscribe by RSS

Some sites like Newegg and Ebay allow you to subscribe to a custom search result by RSS feed. This is especially helpful in a marketplace like Ebay where new long-tail products appear and disappear frequently.

Check store availability

Multi-channel retailer Barnes and Noble allows customers to find products in-store directly from search results. Innovative!

This collection of search features is not a checklist for perfect search, rather an inspiration board. Some of these features are must-haves – conventional search box placement, filtered navigation, sort-by tools and view all links. Not every idea in this post will be appropriate to your business or customer, but I hope it gives you some ideas of how you can improve the usability and presentation of your search results.

You may also be interested in 15 Things to Ask Your Site Search Vendor.

Original post by Linda Bustos

Every once in a while I come across something truly unique on an ecommerce store. This time it’s Alibris, which does a very cool thing with its Advanced Search tool.

Customers can create a custom bundle at the lowest price by entering multiple ISBN numbers in Advanced Search.

While this makes sense for a site like Alibris which is a marketplace of competing sellers (with cheap, cheap, cheap prices), this approach can have application to other types of businesses. For example, you could build custom bundles based on attributes like highest star rating. On a telco site, a customer could enter a mobile handset model and click to find a bundle based on lowest prices or highest star ratings.

Other cool stuff I’ve blogged about online retailers doing include:

How to Grow Your Email List from Your Shopping Cart

Getting Digital With Physical Goods

RueLaLa Uses Calendar-to-Action in Emails

A Simple Way to Promote Your Loyalty Program

Prescription for A Targeted Shopping Experience: Drugstore Dot Com

Viva innovation and creativity!

Original post by Linda Bustos

Though it’s rare to find visual search implemented on an ecommerce site (Zappos had it but took it down), visual search and image recognition technology has a lot of potential in online shopping. I’ve been asked in the past what I think they can do for ecommerce. This post is a brain dump of a bunch of ways I could see retailers benefiting from image recognition and visual search.

Visual Search

1. Retailers with large product catalogs

Like.com is an affiliate shopping site that aggregates fashion items from a large number of retailers, and is an example of how helpful a visual search tool can be as an alternative to other forms of filtered navigation. Clicking on any product’s Visual Search button re-sorts a page to show items that most resemble the item clicked. This helps customers find items they like faster. It can also improve conversion. Say a customer likes a handbag that appears on the first page of your “Handbags” category, but the price is too high for her. A simple visual search may expose hidden gems that fit her budget, but may have appeared on page 14 of your category results. EyeAlike is a tool already available for retailers who want to use visual search on their sites.

Image Recognition

2. Eyewear

I blogged before about EyeBuyDirect’s Wall of Frame which has become a big hit with its customers. The Wall of Frame is a collection of photos customers submit of themselves using the eyewear retailer’s try-before-you-buy tool.

Imagine uploading a picture of yourself and allowing face recognition to filter the Wall of Frame to people with your face shape. You could find a pair that flatters your face without trying random styles on with the tool, then try them on your own photo after you found one that you liked on another’s photo. The less time customers have to spend searching for a good pair of glasses, the more likely they are to convert.

3. Apparel retailers

MyShape is a site that offers “custom shops” to members based on their style preferences and their actual body measurements. This takes the guesswork out of finding brands and styles that fit, because the whole catalog is filtered based on what will look good on you. You can fill in a full profile including all of your body measurements, but if you’re lazy you can just filter the shop by SHAPE (each letter applies to a different body shape). You could upload a photo of yourself dressed in black and have image recognition determine what shape you are.

4. Home hardware

Imagine you could locate replacement parts for appliances and home tools. Upload a photo of a drill and let the system detect the make and model, taking you to a page with the right accessories/bits for that tool.

5. Mobile phones

Like home hardware, you could upload a photo of your cellular phone and be matched with compatible accessories. (Think of a customer who buys a second-hand phone and doesn’t know the exact make or model).

6. Gifting

Say you have to buy something for your mother in law. Snap a picture of her good china and you can find and purchase an item from that exact set.

Amazon’s already using image recognition in their mobile application, just snap a photo of any product at home, on the street or in brick-and-mortar stores with your device’s camera and match it to products on Amazon.com. There’s no reason other online retailers couldn’t benefit from a similar tool.

Truly the possibilities are exciting and endless, but we still don’t see image recognition used much in practice today. Perhaps in 5 years it will be standard across online stores?

Original post by Linda Bustos

A while back, Marketing Sherpa shared a case study (membership required) for furniture retailer Black Forest Decor. “Making the logo search box bigger” boosted conversion by 20% and revenue by a staggering 84%.

Black Forest Decor still has a modest sized search box when you compare it to the trend of super-wide boxes we see on the likes of Linens N Things, Overstock, Sears and PC Mall:

Black Forest Decor

Linens N Things

Overstock

Sears

PC Mall

Certainly you don’t want a box so small your customers have to search for the search box! And enlarging your search box, making it more prominent in design, styling, “Search” button or placement, leads to higher search box use, less site abandonment and higher conversion. That makes sense.

But is there such thing as too big? I believe the answer is “yes” when the search box is so big it looks like a banner ad, or otherwise fades into the background of the other elements on your page. It’s possible that’s the case with the sites above.

As always, it’s best to test a bunch of sizes and placements before you decide which search box is right for your site.

Original post by Linda Bustos

“Advanced search” means different things to different people. Some ecommerce vendors describe their filtered navigation or guided selling capabilities as advanced search, as does the Internet Retailer 500 Guide. This post considers “advanced search” to be a tool separate from the regular search function, that allows searchers to specify more detailed criteria that is not handled by keyword search or filtered navigation.

Advanced search is rare

Advanced search is rare in B2C ecommerce (aside from Book/DVD sellers). You’ll find it more often on B2B sites, marketplaces with thousands of SKUs, or for specialized products.

For most ecommerce sites, filtered navigation is better for users than advanced search. Searchers can quickly scan available filter options and refine results without leaving the search results page. Because “Advanced Search” is often overlooked (a tiny text link), or avoided because it sounds difficult, more searchers will actually use the filtered navigation.

Filtered navigation has been around for years in ecommerce, and Google has recently added filters into its search results:

Do you need advanced search?

Though filtered navigation typically covers what advanced search is supposed to do, there are cases your business might require advanced search in addition to filters:

1. If your filtered navigation can’t accommodate all the things your advanced search must do.
2. If an advanced search function is table stakes in your industry. Not offering what your customers are used to forces them to learn a new process, which may hurt your site’s effectiveness.
3. If a guided, stepped process where the options are configured at once (rather than one-by-one with filtered navigation) makes the most sense (e.g. when your customer is “hunting” vs. “browsing”).

Advanced search usability tips

1. Remember, you don’t have to name it “Advanced Search”

Unless your industry demands “Advanced Search,” you can soften the label like Orbitz’ “Expand search options,” sounds more useful than complicated:

Orbitz appends “Expand search options” with examples of what to expect from it (preferred airlines, first/business class, etc.)

2. Provide instructions

Most people will gloss over text, but a brief description of how your advanced search works can be helpful. Keep instructions as concise as possible, and link to more information if necessary. Avoid hijacking searchers to a new page or pop up window to get detailed instructions by using Javascript hover effects or “plus-box” expand/collapse, like Lexis Nexis:

After expanding, you can collapse “Hide Search Tips”:

You can also explain individual search criteria with mouseover, like Travelocity:

3. Explain jargon

AbeBooks understands only the geeky will know what “Boolean Search” means, and provides an explanation link:

4. Test a stepped process

Like the checkout process, numbering steps may help searchers through the advanced search process. It may also hinder by adding to the perceived difficulty of the form (it really depends on how your advanced search tool is designed). It’s a good idea to test this to see what works best for you.

5. Don’t style Cancel or Reset buttons alike

Careless Web users can easily wipe out their inputs by hitting the wrong button when they look exactly the same and are given the same visual “weight.”

AbeBooks in example 3 does it much better, styling the Find Book button differently than the Clear Fields link.

6. Choose button labels carefully

This example uses “Search” and “Continue Shopping.” It’s not clear if “Continue Shopping” means abandon advanced search or continue.

7. Let users know what’s required vs. optional input

You can do this by separating optional criteria into its own section:

Or by using radio buttons for mandatory items and checkboxes for optional (this is a web convention):

8. Don’t use too many “Go” buttons

“Go,” “Search,” “Submit” – the label doesn’t matter. Showing too many buttons makes it confusing and is unnecessary. Stick to one at the end of the form.

Remember, your Go/Search/Submit button is a call-to-action, and button color, shape and size affects conversion. This applies to advanced search submission as well, so test out different button designs:

9. Consider different categories may require different advanced search design

Amazon recognizes that books have different search attributes than magazines, music, classical music, DVDs and toys/games. So, it offers slightly different advanced search forms for each. You can toggle between them from the same page. Here are a couple examples:

The attributes for books are different than those for classical music:

And classical music to those from movies/DVDs:

While this is significantly more work, it may be suitable for your business if it reduces the “noise” of having one form that tries to accommodate everything.

10. User test

While you can certainly conduct A/B or multivariate testing, there are reasons why user testing with a small sample of your target customers is better for advanced search.

First, if your advanced search is rarely used, it could take years before you find a statistically significant winner.

Second, advanced search functionality is more complex to design and code than a simple home page layout or cart button design. You want to test the usability of the advanced search process, not just the impact of design elements or copy on conversion. User testing with a small sample of your target customers will help you identify major gaps in usability, and give you insight on what to “fix” or what features to add. Have users test your existing tool against competitors’ or other sites’ advanced search. This saves redesign and development resources in early stages until you understand where users are succeeding vs. failing.

11. Offer saved searches

While this is an advanced feature, it’s very helpful for B2B ecommerce sites and products that have longer days-to-purchase cycles.

Because advanced search is one of the most difficult pieces of an ecommerce site for users to figure out, if it’s essential to your business, it’s essential to invest in advanced search usability.

Original post by Linda Bustos

When working out your site search requirements for your ecommerce system, do you know what to look for in a site search tool?

O’Reilly Media has granted Get Elastic permission to reprint this excerpt of Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender’s Search Patterns. The following is a checklist of things you discuss with vendors when evaluating a site search solution:

System architecture
Formal description of the hardware and software components, including crawlers, indexers, data models, and query parsers.

Performance
How many simultaneous queries are supported? What’s the maximum number of sources? How about the size of the data repository?

File formats
What types of conent and data (e.g., HTML, PDF, mySQL) are supported? Can the system handle both structured and unstructured data?

Integration
Is there a standards-based Web Services API for embedding search functionality in other sites and software? Is there a list of available connectors?

Access control
Does the system support multiple levels of access for different user types and individuals? How does it manage privacy and security?

Features
How does the system handle full text and metadata? Does it support Boolean operators, wildcards, stemming, stop words, phrase and proximity searching, and spellcheck? What algorithms are used for ranking? What are the options for query refinement? Can results be saved, printed, and shared?

Implementation
What sort of expertise is required for installation, configuration, and maintenance? How does the vendor handle training and support?

Pricing model
Is the product priced by data or activity volume, CPUs, features, and/or number of unique application? How about support, maintenance, and professional services fees? What’s the total cost of ownership?

Vendor credentials
How long has the vendor been in business? How are they positioned in the market? Can we see their financials and customer references?

These are all necessary questions, but they’re also insufficient. Because there’s so much ground to cover, it’s easy to lose sight of the goal. The designer’s role is to repeatedly refocus attention on the user experience. A supplemental checklist that’s informed by an information architecture strategy and empathy for the user might include:

Speed
What will it take to ensure subsecond response in the real world? It’s worth asking this question early and often. Don’t take “slow” for an answer!

Relevance tuning
How are results ranked? Is it possible to adjust the settings to allow for popularity, content type, date, and diversity?

Navigation and filtering
Is it easy to customize sort order and limit options? Is there native support for faceted navigation? Is it fast?

Federated search
How does the system handle simultaneous search of multiple databases or indexes? What is the impact on speed? Is it possible to merge several indexes into one to dramatically improve performance?

Linguistic toolset
Is there support for thesaurus integration and crosswalking between vocabularies? How about autocategorization and entity extraction?

Search analytics
What tools are provided for measuring and understanding user behavior? is there an API that supports sharing and repurposing of this data?

Post Script

The authors of Search Patterns comment that, even in 2010, “search is the worst usability problem on the Web.”

“Search is an elephant that hides in sight because executives lack the right radar. Many in management don’t realize the role search plays in defining the user experience. They fixate on the home page, they fuss about look and feel, and they care about the content. They may even fume about findability, but they are easily distracted or misled because they really don’t understand search.”

Often, improving search functionality and usability should be a higher priority than tweaking home and product pages. But its mystique prevents ecommerce professionals from doing anything about it. Search Patterns is a helpful, easy read that will give you an understanding of how people use search, how search fits in to your overall design and information architecture, and what things you need to consider when fine tuning your search functionality.

Original post by Linda Bustos

SLI Systems has given me permission to publish of nearly 80 tips on site search you’ll find in their latest e-book Big Book of Site Search Tips (free download).

Enjoy!

1. Regularly check the top search terms on your site.

They can be good indicators of new items your clients are looking for, or product lines that are performing well. For example, SLI customer Jelly Belly used to offer only a 10-pound bulk case of its Champagne Bubbles jelly beans. Using information gleaned from site search, the company discovered that Champagne Bubbles candy was the third most-requested search. They decided to offer a one-pound container, and it’s now one of the company’s biggest sellers with wedding planners.

2. Review site search terms for SEO and PPC campaigns.

This is a great source for keyword research because it shows the language your visitors are using.

3. Review the searches with poor or no results.

A poor result is one that has a low clickthrough rate. These terms either relate to content that people are searching for that you don’t have or, more often, are examples of your visitors using different language to describe your content than you do. Both of these pieces of information are extremely valuable. If visitors are searching for content that you don’t offer, then you know that there is demand for that content and may indicate products that you should be stocking on your ecommerce site. If visitors are searching for products that you are not able to or don’t intend to carry, then you can address this by showing keyword-specific banners suggesting similar products.

If your visitors are using a different language to describe your content or products, you can either start using this language on your site (which will help with your search engine optimization as well), or you can add synonyms to your search so your visitors will find the items they’re looking for.

4. Review your site search quality metrics to ensure your site search relevancy is improving over time.

A good site search solution “learns” by tracking visitors’ aggregate search queries and click-throughs to deliver results based on criteria such as popularity. This means that, over time, searchers on your site are presented with the most relevant search results and can find what they’re looking for more quickly and easily. Improved searches result in more satisfied customers and greater sales.

5. Integrate your analytics package with your site search.

It shouldn’t require too much effort to make sure your analytics software is tracking search activity on your site. Your site search provider might be able to help you with this. Being able to measure site search results – like any other marketing activity – demonstrates the value and ROI benefit you’re getting. For example, you can track the conversion rate for site search results pages as compared with other pages on your site, as well as the percentage of revenue generated by site search results pages. You can also determine the average order size for site search users as compared to those who don’t search; if your site search solution is performing well, those numbers should be higher.

6. Watch the keywords that are quickly gaining popularity so you’re able to continually meet increasing product demand.

Again, it’s important to understand the language of your customers – and like any trend, nothing lasts forever, including the search terms used most frequently on your site. Trends around popular terms may shift with the seasons, or with popular songs and movies, or with the latest look sported by the Jonas Brothers. The point is, as terms gain popularity, they signal to you that the products that go along with those terms will likely also gain popularity, so be prepared.

Download the whole collection of site search tips here.

Original post by Linda Bustos

In case you missed it on TechCrunch the other day, Google is now showing search boxes within SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for some of the larger online retailers like Amazon, Zappos and Office Max.

The boxes only appear for certain keywords, for example “amazon” and “shop amazon” but not “amazon books.” Zappos shows up for “zappos shoes” but not “zappos shopping.” For other sites, adding “shop” or “shopping” to the site name won’t trigger a search box at all.

OfficeMax should be pleased that this works for them but not for Staples and Office Depot, at least it makes them seem a bit more important? I noticed that Target and Walmart get a search box, but not Sears. NewEgg, Radio Shack and BestBuy get one, but not Circuit City. Ebay and Overstock also are left out, which is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Even comparison engines are either in or out. Bizrate, Nextag and PriceGrabber are in, Shop.com and Shopping.com are out. Perhaps this is a feature that Google is still rolling out in stages, or it’s just being tested. You never know if a new feature would fly unless you give it a trial run!

When you use these boxes, the results leave something to be desired. Results are not helpful without product images. And the top results are only going to lead you to the destination site’s search page for your keyword, anyway.

This could be useful if your shipping and customer service information is impossible to find with your internal site search. But top online retailers like these should already have that optimized. TechCrunch ran a reader poll and the results are close to 50/50 on whether users like the idea or not. I’m in the “nay” camp, I don’t see the value.

If these boxes were included with larger retail site listings in Google for general terms like “clock radio” or “wireless headphones” - it could give bigger retailers a click-through advantage. Anything that makes a search result stand out (like sub-category links or a Google Checkout badge in AdWords) attracts the eye and may be perceived as a more trusted result. I hope it doesn’t end up this way, unless it’s a completely level playing field - retailers large and small. But again, I don’t any value in doing so.

SEO Tip

You’ll notice the search box in the screenshot above has ” {keyword} site:http://www.domain.com ” in the search box. “Site-colon” is an advanced “search operator” that you can use to check which pages of your site are indexed by a search engine. If you want to check if a particular page is indexed, you can copy and paste that url after the “site:”

Running a site-colon check on your root domain will show all your indexed pages. If your product pages are not showing up, it’s a sign the engine is not crawling your site as deep as you want it to and you should look into your site structure or other SEO activities to ensure there are no barriers to indexing.

Effective Online Merchandising: What Sells?
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Guest Panelist: Mike Svatek, Director, Marketing & Product Management, Baynote
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Original post by Linda Bustos

Last week Justin Palmer posted 11 Ways to Optimize Your Site Search while Ann Smarty posted a roundup of free keyword research tools over at YouMoz.

One of the tools Ann mentioned was MSN AdCenter’s Keyword Mutation Tool. Despite its grotesque moniker, it’s a great for optimizing internal site search. You don’t have to be an MSN advertiser to use it, either.

Basically, what this tool does is generate common keyword misspellings for you. So instead of trying to forecast them yourself, or waiting until someone types these errors in your search box and gets a “results not found,” you can adjust your internal search to include these possibilities.

It takes some playing around with though, for example I got no results for “appliance” but a few for “appliances”:

You’ll also want to manually test these misspellings to make sure they work (for your most popular or important items / keywords). If your ecommerce software search function uses fuzzy logic, your search should be able to recognize variations of keywords. But it’s always worth a spot-check for your critical terms.

12 Things Retailers Must Learn from Christmas ‘07
Free webinar: January 24th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Linda Bustos, Emerging Media Analyst, Elastic Path Software
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Original post by Linda Bustos

Amazon is often touted as the usability darling of e-commerce. Number one on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 List last year, the mega-store is usually way ahead of other retailers in so many ways. That’s why my experience on Amazon this weekend was so surprising. Shopping on Amazon.ca, I experienced search failure more than once — and also discovered that my problems wouldn’t have happened on Amazon.com.

Exhibit A - Can’t Handle A Typo

This is what happened when I made a spelling error for “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day” on Amazon.ca:

And this is the same search on Amazon.com:

(more…)

Is Your Affiliate Program Your Top Sales Generator? If Not…
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Guest Panelist: Shawn Collins, Author, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants

Original post by Linda Bustos

Google Analytics recently introduced an internal site search feature to its already kick-ass free stats program — aptly named “Site Search.”

This tool works with your existing site search and is invaluable to ecommerce marketers as it gives you so much insight into customer intent and your website’s success at delivering results. For example, you can use search log data to discover:

• What keywords people search for - what’s hot and what do they want that you don’t carry
• What search refinements are made, indicating possible “Results Not Found” messages or unsatisfactory results
• What pages the searches were made from, and where users clicked to

The next 30 days is when this information will be crucial. Customers can’t buy what they can’t find. Maybe you only use the term “notebook computer case” and your customers search for “laptop bags.” You can tweak your product pages and search engine for the various ways customers describe your product until the right pages show up when you test your site.

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Is Your Affiliate Program Your Top Sales Generator? If Not…
Free webinar: Tuesday, December 11th, 9am PT / 12pm ET:
Affiliate Marketing: What Every Retailer Ought to Know
Guest Panelist: Shawn Collins, Author, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants

Original post by Linda Bustos