A couple weeks ago, we dug into internal site search & found that in some cases, searches performed by only 10% of the site's total traffic made up nea

Tip #1 - Make sure search boar is visible.

Tip #2 - Use auto-complete, suggestions and create Top 10 Search results content.

Tip #3 - Show most "relevant" results first (see tip #10).

Tip #4 - Deliver results in "local language" i.e. call things the same as your audience.

Tip #5 - Offer multiple ways users can filter results (price, category, best reviewed, most shared).

Tip #6 - Include product reviews, in-stock status and purchasing buttons.

 

Tip #7: Mine internal search to guide merchandising.

Tip 8: Keep SEO Spiders away from internal search results to avoid duplicate content and no social support problems.

Tip #9: Give customers the ability to save searches to MyProfile.

Tip #10 Use an algorithm to fire search results based on predictive analytics (persona based if possible).

Marty Note
When I was a Director of Ecommerce we used Internal search to help make our aggressive growth goals. I added 7 - 10 because internal search is every ecommerce team's best ally. Internal search is a goldmine of information. Follow these ten tips to mine the gold internal search provides.

 

Via Martin (Marty) Smith, Os Ishmael