As we discussed last week, the purpose of refinements is to allow shoppers to find what they are looking for more quickly. By indicating specific characteristics to narrow down the number of options shown in a category, visitors don’t have to scroll through pages of products to find the right one.
There are some simple ways you can deliver an exceptional shopping experience through your refinements.
Color palettes provide a visually appealing way to show color options for a particular product. Plus, it takes the guess work out of identifying colors with names like vermilion (a reddish orange) or verdigris (a yellowish green). Color palettes are often displayed on the left column with other refinements.
Display products in the color shoppers requested. For example, if the default image for a shirt is red, but it is also offered in blue, show the blue shirt when shoppers refine the category to blue.
If your product is available in several colors, let visitors see the color options from the navigation page. One effective way of doing this is to allow visitors to hover over the color palettes directly under the picture of the product. The color of the product changes, while other products on the page remain unchanged.
The human brain processes images faster than text. Consider using images to signal certain refinements, such as apparel type (dresses, shirts, pants), brands, ratings, colors and shapes. Of course, images won’t work for some refinements, so use your judgment. Make sure the images you use are clear and simple, so your customers won’t be left guessing.
If you use navigational images to identify subcategories, make sure they are easy to understand. You want to make sure shoppers don’t accidentally confuse the subcategory images for the product selection.
exactly where they are on the site and what refinements have been used.
Another best practice is to use an X or checkmark beside the selected refinements. This allows visitors to easily remove a refinement selection without deleting all the selected refinements and gives shoppers the flexibility they need to find the item they’re looking for. A Clear All option offers a quick “back-to-the-top” navigation alternative.
Refinements allow visitors to quickly narrow down their product selections as they travel through your site. This is one of the best ways (aside from using the search box) that visitors express to you exactly what they want.
The right use of refinements can make the shopping journey easy and intuitive. From broad category pages, you can break down choices into more specific subcategories. On a furniture site, for example, shoppers might start with the Living Room category then navigate to Sofa and Armchairs, Coffee and Side Tables or Living Room Lighting, depending on what they need.
In addition, providing refinements for brand, price, style and color can help shoppers pinpoint the products they had in mind. In my next two blog posts I will outline some practical ways refinements can help you improve your site navigation.
Instead of showing every possible refinement (which can overwhelm shoppers), examine your analytics to see which refinements are used the most and which are hardly used at all. For example, do you really need the option to refine jeans by the number of pockets? If it is useful to your visitors, then show this option only when it’s relevant. A simple list of refinements versus a convoluted one increases your chances of improving your conversion rates.
Show relevant refinements for each category and make sure each refinement option contains results. You may be tempted to provide general refinements across your site for all category pages, but this can lead to a frustrating shopping experience. For example, you wouldn’t want to provide a refine-by-color option if an item is only available in one hue.
By indicating the number of products for each refinement, shoppers quickly understand how many results they can expect to find under each option. This guides them to consider other refinements if necessary and assures them they have seen all possible products.
Let visitors easily re-rank the criteria for how products are shown. Shoppers might want to view products by best sellers, highest rated, new arrivals, most expensive or least expensive. As a default, show products in order of most relevant or most popular. Once a visitor chooses a new order, remember the preference to spare him or her the hassle and frustration of re-ranking products on each category page.
Natural Wellbeing is a site rich with reports, reviews and expert advice about the holistic and natural wellness products they offer. Such quality content can really help move shoppers through purchase decisions – especially for a natural health products site, where first-time buyers can be skeptical. But in order to be useful, the content has to be easily searchable and relevant to the needs of each individual buyer.
When Natural Wellbeing signed with SLI Systems in 2009, I saw a great opportunity to help them bring their rich content into their site search capability. They had a blog, an active social media presence, and a wiki with well-written descriptions of every herbal ingredient that their certified therapists use. But none of these resources were tied to the search results page. We worked closely with them to implement a number of changes.
One change was to create a tabbed format to include relevant blogs, wiki content and Facebook content onto each search results page. In the below screen shot, you can see that a search for “sleep” now shows 44 related product results on the product tab, and there are additional tabs for accessing related blogs (1), wiki articles (36) and Facebook posts (62).
We also created a set of refinements for them (see the left column in the above screen shot), where users can narrow down the search results by rating, price range, brand, category or subcategory. For example, if a user wants to look at only formulas that contain blends of different herbs and doesn’t want to spend more than $20, they can click the $10 – $20 range in Price Range and Formulas in Subcategory. This narrows the number of product results from 44 to 25, as shown below. From that point, the user may want to look at ratings and read more about the products to decide which they want to purchase.
Since SLI’s site search continually learns and improves, the relevancy of search results improves over time. Natural Wellbeing realizes the benefit of letting SLI’s learning search do its work – it frees them from having to constantly tune results, allowing them to focus on other priorities in their business.
Both Natural Wellbeing and its sister site Pet Wellbeing also use SLI’s Site Champion product, which keeps improving SEO without any work on their part. Site Champion uses visitors’ site behavior to automatically create optimized landing pages that are indexed by Google and other Internet search engines.
In March of this year, I worked with them to add SLI’s Rich Auto Complete, which auto-displays product listings and images based on what users are typing in the search box. Since users can click on these products directly from the search box, the feature shortens the path from searching to buying, which creates a better user experience and improves conversions. Since adding Rich Auto Complete, the sites have received significantly higher page views, search users and search result clicks.
Now I’m working on ways we can help with their push for growth. I heard what they’re doing with email marketing, for example and showed them the types of custom templates and landing pages we can create for those campaigns. I’ve let them know what’s working well for others and have developed solutions that will help them achieve their current goals. It is through casual and interactive conversation that we come up with solutions that make a real impact. Being an extension of our customers’ team is what I and all SLI Customer Success Managers strive for.
Changing to a new eCommerce platform is a huge investment, not only in dollars, but time spent integrating your site and training your team on the new features and functions. When you’ve just spent so much time and money upgrading to a new platform, it’s easy to see how adding site search would seem like little more than an additional expense.
But failing to upgrade your eCommerce platform’s search is like upgrading your ski clothes without buying better skis – you may look and feel better, but your technical gear won’t perform well. Upgrading the core search ability of your site can lead to better overall performance and higher conversions.
While platforms do many other things well, they don’t offer specialized features that focus on making your search shine. It’s a fact that visitors who use site search are more likely to convert. So if search is so important, shouldn’t you be paying more attention to it? When you’re looking at your platform’s site search, it’s important to ask a few questions to make sure you’re getting the most out of it.
Are your search results as relevant as they could be?
Advanced site search and navigation improve the quality of search results based on customer shopping behavior and click-throughs, re-ranking products based on popularity. Can it dynamically build SEO pages that continually update to reflect the most popular searches on your site? Pages like this can work toward improving your organic Internet search results rankings.
Are there opportunities for customization?
No two sites are alike, and search features should reflect that. It’s important to implement the features that will appeal to your customers, and make their experience on your site uniquely tailored to their shopping behavior. Don’t let a lack of innovation stifle your site’s growth.
Does your platform share the latest features and best practices with you?
The eCommerce landscape changes quickly and having the best features can make your site stand out from the rest. It’s beneficial to have a partner that understands industry best practices and suggests improvements to site features.
Do you have access to reports and analytics?
The reporting data you get from site search is filled with important insights that can help you understand your users and better target their needs. Having access to the top search terms, poor results and top converting pages can help you anticipate new trends or better promote the most popular search queries.
Does your platform have A/B testing?
Can you make fact-based decisions on the value of certain features, designs, or buttons? A/B and multivariate tests can produce surprising results, because not all customers behave in the same way. In some tests, we’ve seen conversion rates increase when using grid view, while others increase with list view. Since every site is different, you shouldn’t trust a general “rule” – but test it for yourself.
Do you have a dedicated, responsive customer support team?
Having a single point of contact can mean the difference between personalized, responsive service and being continually frustrated from lack of response. Making sure you have strong support will give you time to focus on other business priorities.
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, then I’d suggest taking a good look at what your current site search is really providing you. A good site search will give fairly accurate results and have a few bells and whistles. A great site search will not only deliver relevant results, it will give you crucial insights into what drives your customers and actionable ways to proceed. Additionally, it shouldn’t be so overly complex that you won’t use it.
If you’d like a hassle-free solution and a solid team behind you to help you grow your site, give us a shout at discovery@sli-systems.com. We’d love to hear from you.
I worked closely with MonsterCable.com to implement their latest site search, and it was great working with them. Personally, I enjoy playing with electronics and have brought some of their headphones and home theater products, so when I learned that they were a client I quickly raised my hand and volunteered to work on their site. Since Monster carries such a wide variety of products for different purposes, visitors need to be able to quickly find the right product that fits them. When implementing the site search, I discussed the best methods with the Monster team to find out how to make the left navigation most intuitive for visitors. For instance, if a person searches for “high performance”, one of the first things they should be able to pick is what category it belongs in. Therefore we put category as the top refinement in the left navigation. Then after the person selects a category such as headphones, they may want to see both in ear and on ear headphones in their search results, therefore I recommended to Monster that we install multi select check boxes so that the user is able to include different selections. Another example is that a user may want both 5 star and 4 star rated products in their search result and this is where multi select check boxes come in handy. This feature is very useful because no matter what the refinement is, the user is able to combine refinements on the fly to create a personal view.
Another important feature that I worked with Monster on, was Rich Auto Complete. Monster Products are aesthetically pleasing and come in an assortment of colors, which is why Rich Auto Complete is a vital feature when visitors first touch the search. When typing in the search query they can actually see products show up in real time through the Rich Auto Complete drop down. This helps drive conversions for Monster since customers can directly access the product page by clicking directly on the product descriptions and images inside the drop down.
I also suggested to Monster to put search suggestions and related searches inside their search results. Not everyone will know the exact type of product when searching for a product. They may discover that when they search for “video cable” that they actually need to look for a “composite video cable”. On the other hand if a visitor knows exactly what they want, they can directly type in the SKU number and it will directly jump to the product page. Even if a visitor only has part of a SKU number, the product(s) that contain those numbers will display properly, I personally love this feature.
Send me an email at info@sli-systems.com or call 1 (866) 240 -2812 if you would like to hear more about how I worked with Monster Products.
In an ideal world visitors will come to your website, find what they want and make a purchase. In the real world only a small portion of users will follow this pattern. Many will get interrupted, distracted, or need more time to make a decision for whatever reason. The search history feature is a simple way to allow users to return to their previous session – and the items they were interested in.
An online storefront needs to make it easier for visitors to get directly to the products or information they want in order to improve the chances they’ll make a purchase and increase their engagement with your brand. Enhancing your site search facilitates this no-hassle experience, and there are many ways to do this – for instance, using Rich Auto Complete, offering related search suggestions, and adding refinements. Displaying a search history is another way to improve your site’s usability and drive sales.
As visitors are searching, you can record their queries and make it easy for them to perform these searches again when they come back to the site without having to re-enter keywords, or even remember what they searched for. Displaying the search history in a clearly labeled “Recent Searches” box can serve as a reminder of their previous session and give customers access to the items they’re interested in with just a click or two. You can add the search history list to your search results pages, as well as product pages and your home page, so that visitors can access this list from anywhere on your site.
A nice feature to offer with search history is the option to “clear list,” as you can see in the FTD.com example above. Similarly, you can also allow visitors to select which terms to delete. Visitors may decide the list is out of date and they may want to delete it; or, if it’s a shared computer, they may not want someone in the same household to know what they’re buying for a birthday gift.
Search history is yet another tool for making your site a little easier to use and a little easier to buy from. If you’d like to add search history to your site, we can help – contact your SLI customer success manager.
In last month’s newsletter, we explained how to identify the most useful refinements for your site search, depending on your customers’ needs and the product mix. Figuring out which refinements to offer is the starting point, but there’s more work to be done: This month, we’ll tell you how to display these refinements so that your site visitors can make best use of them, and have a better search (and shopping) experience.
Place frequently used refinements at the top of the list. Make sure that the refinements most likely to be used can be easily accessed by visitors. Less frequently used refinements can be placed farther down on the list, or perhaps made visible only when the user has clicked on a certain category – in which case, they can select refinements that are part of a subcategory.
If you discover over time that visitors are not making use of certain refinements, then you can decide if you want to stop displaying them. This should be an ongoing evaluation process: You should continually look for ways to improve usability (and thereby conversions) by simplifying the site search process. Don’t feel compelled to display all possible refinements, which is confusing to users.
Show the number of results next to refinement options. Next to specific refinements, display the number of results that are available when that refinement is clicked on, so that visitors have a sense of how many results they’ll see. You can view this feature at work on the site for Lighting by Gregory, an SLI customer.
Show color refinements as a palette instead of text. Since colors are visual, site visitors will respond more quickly to a display of actual colors, rather than the names of the colors in text form. A color palette also takes up less space within search, so it helps reduce visual clutter.
For products available in several colors, consider retooling search results so that if a specific color refinement is selected, the product is displayed in that color. For instance, the main photo for a shirt available in red, green and blue may show the red shirt. If visitors select the blue color refinement, the image should change to the blue shirt.
When it comes to deciding how and where to display refinements, take the same approach that you would do with other aspects of your site design: Look at usage data, talk to your customers, and test options to see which refinements and placements work better. If you need advice on choosing and displaying refinements, contact your SLI Systems customer success manager.
Test placement of refinements. Depending on your audience and your site design, users may make more use of refinements depending on where they are placed – most commonly, they appear at the top of the page or in the left navigation pane. Try to avoid placing refinements at the bottom of the page, since visitors need to scroll down to view them. Test different positions to see which ones your visitors prefer.
Allow visitors to navigate between refinements on the same level. If a visitor clicks on a refinement but then decides they want to see a different refinement, don’t require them to click “back” to get to the original search results page first. They should be able to simply click a different refinement option from that page and easily see a new batch of results.
Don’t show refinement options that have no results. For instance, if there are no red products for a particular search, then there should be no link shown to restrict the results to red products.
Avoid drop-down boxes for refinements. Drop-down boxes make it harder for people to see the available refinement options, and they’ll be less likely to use them. If refinements are shown as a list of links, then they can select the refinement with a single click. However, if you have many refinements, or many options within a refinement, then showing them as links can take up too much screen real estate. In this case, drop-down boxes may be the best option.
Show a breadcrumb trail. A breadcrumb trail will show the search term and any refinements that have been made. It helps visitors understand where they’ve been on the site and how they arrived at the page they’re on. It also makes it easy to remove refinements, and helps them go back to a broader range of results if they choose. Breadcrumbs take up very little space, and are a standard navigational element.
Refinements or facets, are one of the most important ways to address the myriad ways your online visitors can search your site. They allow visitors to narrow down search results based on certain product or content characteristics, so that searches can be completed in less time.
But how do you choose which refinements to use? Do you mirror your product and catalogue structure, and run the risk of creating un-useful refinements? Or do you create refinements visitors are interested in? And in this case, which are they? By making a plan for determining which refinements to display and how to display them, you can find the happy medium – that is, the refinements that meet the needs of your customers, and that mirror your product and content choices. In this two-part series, we’ll cover best practices tips for both understanding what refinements to include, and how best to display them.
The first step in choosing refinements is to examine the content that is indexed in your site search, and how this content is structured or broken down. For instance, your content might include product pages, blog posts, video, help-desk information, and social media content. Each type of content will have its own unique structure, which will dictate how you create refinements. For example, the structure for products could include price, category, brand, color, size, in-stock items, and so on – it all depends on your particular mix of products.
In some cases, structure can be inherited from other data. For example, products may have customer reviews, which in turn have ratings, and perhaps user-generated tags. Blogs may have structure such as author, date published, tags, and comments. These structures will provide you with a list of possible refinements to include in your site search.
Another way to uncover possible refinements is to examine popular keywords in your site search reports to see how many people are searching with refinement-related terms, like colors or gender (e.g. “men’s blue parka”). Another good source: SEO traffic reports from your analytics package, which give you an overview of what people are requesting from search engines.
Keep in mind that it’s not necessary to make every possible refinement available to your customers. Too many refinements will confuse the user, and some of the more obscure refinements will likely not get used very often. Have some conversations with your customers and ask them how they would like to be able to search and refine on your site. After these conversations, you may decide that some refinements will be displayed only after the visitor has selected another facet – for example, after people select a category, they’ll be able to select a subcategory.
In some cases, you may not have the data to provide the refinements. For example, customers of an online furniture store may want to be able to refine their search results by room. To add this facet, you need to add a “room” field to your product database. This can be an intensive process, so you should make sure such a facet adds value.
In next month’s newsletter, we’ll offer some advice on how to display refinements within site search results.