What’s behind your eCommerce search box? You’re not going to like the answer
As an eRetailer, one of the most critical functions on your website is your search box. This is where your shoppers go to find things they want to buy. The truth is that, deep down; you know it just doesn’t work very well. Most eRetailers think that “search” is just “search” and that all search tools are just about the same. They expect that their search has some navigation, basic spell correction, and maybe type-ahead. If that’s all search offers, then what’s the difference, really?
I hear this mantra all the time when I attend the Magento Imagine conference, IBM Amplify and Internet Retailer. It is the general consensus, all search is basically the same. There’s a reason for that, all of the largest eCommerce platforms, Magento, hybris, IBM WebSphere Smarter Commerce and NetSuite all base their search on an open source keyword engine called SOLR. Each one of these companies has an army of software engineers trying to make SOLR smarter, make it return better results, make it . . . actually work! And, by the way, each of these platform companies knows that their search is, in a word . . . awful.
Search giants like Google faced the same dilemma for almost a decade. Google was originally a keyword search engine with hundreds of software engineers working on algorithms for years, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get the engine to become intuitive. Google foresaw the future of search when Apple launched Siri, and acquired a natural language, contextual based search engine and quietly replaced their existing engine. As an internet user, I’m sure you’ve noticed how much more intuitive Google has become. Their search-as-you-type works brilliantly and has been extended to OKGoogle for mobile voice search. If you haven’t tried mobile voice search, you should.
Wouldn’t it be great if your eCommerce site worked like that? Go ahead, close your eyes and envision your mobile site with one-button, voice-enabled search. Your shoppers will become buyers as they press one button, speak their request and have exactly what they are looking for pop up on the screen. As an eRetailer, if your shoppers find what they want the first time, with the first search on the first screen, don’t you think they will buy that item from you?
Well you can actually have all of that and more in about two weeks time. Our search engine, EasyAsk, gives your eCommerce site the edge by offering spell correction that is automatic and accurate, and type-ahead that is intuitive and serves up the exact products you are looking for before you finish typing.
When it comes to all other eCommerce keyword search engines, search IS just search. If you want to improve your results, have higher conversions and delighted buyers, you can bank on a smarter, more intuitive search solution. Come join The NorthFace, Timberland, True Value and 400 other eRetailers who have already made the switch to EasyAsk. The last thing you want to do is to bet you business on a free, obsolete, open source search solution. Sometimes, you get what you pay for and ‘free’ might just be the most expensive decision you could make.