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Whilst 30% of all visitors perform use a site search box, it's a part of the website that is under valued by many businesses with almost 84% of companies failing to actively optimise or measure their on site search. In this post we'll explore our top 10 site search solutions that will drive conversions.
If you're looking to increase conversions on any page, not just search here's our guide for 10 alternative tools to do just that.
Sources: eConsultancy, Moz
SPEEDY SEARCH: ELASTIC SEARCH
Consumer facing sites need a search tool that can deliver results at a lightening fast speed. Elastic is a search engine that can index documents quickly so that there’s nothing holding you up on the back end.
CUSTOMISABLE SEARCH: SWIFTYPE
If 90% of users that search on your site for tomatoes online are looking for the page on fresh tomatoes, Swift’s customisable ranking enables web owners to be in control of the results that’ll come out on top.
PERSONALISED SEARCH: TRAVELTIME
Rather than searching points of interest data using miles radius, TravelTime lets users find results using their maximum travel time, transport mode and time of travel so that every search area is personalised to the user. Find out why it increase conversions here.
CONTEXTUAL SEARCH: GOOGLE PLACES API
Google is consistently asking their users to contribute new information about the 100mn+ places it stores detailed information for. Using their points of interest data will create a location-based search with a rich context.
PRE-EMPTIVE SEARCH: NEXTOPIA
Nextopia’s autocomplete functionality pre-empts what users are looking for and delivers suggestions as they type. This means that minimal effort is needed from the user to get to the oage they’re looking for.
SOCIAL PROOF RESULTS: TRUSTPILOT
User reviews give potential buyers an unbiased information about a potential product and is considered more trust worthy than outbound marketing efforts. Trustpilot leverages this to build trust between potential buyers and organisations.
EMAIL LIST BUILDING POP UPS: SUMOME
If users don’t find what they’re looking for on the search results page, they’ll bounce. Don’t waste the opportunity to engage with them before they go by using click and time-based pop ups to catch visitors in an email list before they leave.
SITE SEARCH ANALYTICS: GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Before you buy any of the site search solutions listed in this article it’s important to get a clear picture of what’s required. Google analytics reports provide information on the types of things users are looking for and more.
Image Source: Business2Community
VISUALLY STUNNING SEARCH: MAPBOX
Whether users are searching locations on desktop or mobile, it’s important to deliver results in a visually engaging way. Mapbox allows users to customise the map used as well as how data is visualised on the platform.
CONTEXTUAL SEARCH: PITNEY BOWES
There’s multiple ways users refer to their location – by the point of interest, street name, lat-long, postcode unit or sector or district and others. A robust geocoder ensures that your site can translate where the user is accurately and add even more location data to this point.
There's a lot more to site search than meets the eye - to get even more know-how on site search, Take a look at which site search pages are excelling with these 10 examples or download our eBook below, which includes 5 real life examples of how companies have optimised their search functionality to increase conversions. You can also take a look at our articles for different industries:
- Site search for dating apps
- Site search for Recruitment case study
- Optimising conversions on a travel website
- Property site search case study