E-Shops Lose Dozens of Percents of Revenue Due to Unoptimized Search

Every e-shop shares a simple goal: sell products to customers and attain a high conversion rate. Yet many online stores face challenges such as cart abandonment and declining conversion rates when shoppers cannot find their desired products. This can happen because the product isn’t available—or worse—because the search engine isn’t optimized, making it harder to maximize revenue for your e-shops.

Let’s explore the key aspects of a high-performing website search engine, how recommendation systems can improve conversions, and whether optimizing your search is worth the investment. We also spoke with Gejza Nagy, co-founder of Luigi’s Box, to uncover how their solution helps businesses drive sales and meet customers’ needs by addressing these challenges.

What is the significance of the search function in an e-shop in general?

This is an essential question for every online business. E-shops tend to overlook the search. They usually focus primarily on having a clean UI, site speed, appealing design, or offering perks like free shipping and treat search as a secondary, unavoidable feature that is just present on the website.

They don’t realize that a regular website visitor often has no intention of buying; they just came to “have a look”. Whereas if a user uses site search, they usually do so intending to find something specific and are very likely to buy it. However, this only happens if the website visitors are satisfied with their user experience. On average, these online shoppers have a 5 times higher conversion rate than one who finds the product using the classic website navigation.

Search usage rates vary by segment. For example, in pharmaceuticals, around 24 percent of customers use search when purchasing, and in the books segment, it is almost 44 percent. But even if the average across markets is “only” 20 percent, these searches contribute significantly to online sales and usually represent a third to a half of the total e-shop’s turnover. Therefore, search is not a function to neglect if your goal is to increase revenue and retain loyal customers.

Does the customers’ behavior have any effect on the search?

When online shoppers use site search, they usually already know exactly what they want. However, we must take into account several specifics. For example, in electronics, DIY, and healthcare segments, product codes are used in addition to descriptive phrases. Here, the system must be able to show only the given product to the target audience and no other options with a similar name or characteristics, as is the case with fashion.

For example, I can mention a hardware store where different screws may have a product code that differs by a single digit. When a customer is looking for a specific product to add to their shopping cart, they certainly do not want to see a list of ten other similar ones in the search. That would be confusing. Showing unrelated products can frustrate them and lead to cart abandonment. In short, they want to find what they are looking for.

On the other hand, the fashion segment is the complete opposite. While in other industries, 90% of users expect to find the desired product on the first page of search results, in the case of clothing and footwear, customers prefer to go through several pages with similar products. Shoppers tend to base their decisions on visual elements like product images or videos. They prefer to compare options and find what best suits their style rather than focusing on technical specifications.

Discount days and shopping holidays also play an important role for customers, especially if they know about them in advance. Many like to wait and hope to buy their desired product cheaper. Social commerce and platforms like Instagram also play a crucial role during these bargain sales, as customers often discover trending products and exclusive deals through paid ads and influencer collaborations. They wait for the right deals to appear during major shopping events and actively search for the best offers. This behavior also boosts organic searches on these platforms, leading to an increase in website visitors.

For example, last year, on Black Friday, which falls globally on the last weekend of November, shoppers made eight times more searches and clicks on e-shops than on the previous, more or less regular weekend.

Data from a thousand of our partner e-shops also showed that this activity increased by 45% compared to 2019, undoubtedly resulting from the reduced sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. And even though this year’s increase probably won’t be so drastic, people have already gotten quite used to online shopping thanks to it. This trend, accelerated by the pandemic, underscores the importance of optimizing search and leveraging strategies like retargeting through email marketing and other marketing channels.

Where do e-shops make the most mistakes with search engines?

Foremost, they do not pay attention to search at all, thus depriving themselves of valuable conversions for their online store. At the same time, only 1 to 5 percent of e-shops with an optimized search still encounter no-result searches, while for shops, it is 20 to 40 percent.

The most common reason is that the search engine is simply not “smart” enough. It cannot deal with typos, jargon, singular and plural forms. The online business will inevitably lose valuable conversions if the system cannot evaluate the queries correctly.

A frequent issue is also that they provide a search for product names consisting of three letters at least. But in segments such as healthcare, there are many dietary supplements and drugs with only two-letter names.

For example, we solved this problem with the Benu pharmacy network, where customers would previously get no results when looking for “D3”, even though the pharmacy offers various products containing this vitamin. By eliminating the mentioned shortcomings, we increased Benu’s search turnover by almost 10 percent, which is not exactly a small number for a business with an annual turnover of 250 million euros.

We solve these problems using machine learning and artificial intelligence, which constantly improve their ability to match the “imperfectly” entered term with the right product, including its variants in several world languages.

At the same time, we use both technologies as part of the product recommendation function (Recommender). It helps to increase the average value of the customer’s order and drive sales by recommending other relevant products.

Where is the best place to place the product recommendations in the e-shop?

The most visible advantage of this feature is its flexibility. Smart upsell and product recommendation boxes can be placed anywhere on the website to feel like a natural part of the design.

Moreover, it is possible to adapt them according to the context of their location. For example, to personalize the main page for each customer based on their previous purchases. They can also be integrated directly on the product details page or checkout to give customers alternative options with higher profit margins or superior quality for upselling opportunities.

At the same time, thanks to artificial intelligence, the product recommendations also fit directly into the shopping cart. These recommendations suggest additional items that shoppers might find valuable based on their previous purchases, the products currently being viewed, and the behaviors of the individual shopper and other target customers. This tailored approach not only enhances the user experience but also drives revenue growth through effective cross-selling.

How will the site search change in the upcoming years?

The future certainly belongs to machine learning and artificial intelligence. More precisely, simplification of purchasing decisions will be the key. These technologies have great potential in the possibility of designing tailor-made products for target customers according to the type or size of products they have purchased so far. However, these technologies will also be able to consider current trends or compatibility with other products that the customer has purchased from the online store or recommend products aligned with scarcity or preference for payment options.

For now, artificial intelligence can handle sales optimization – it can suggest better search results ranking according to what customers want and buy most often. It can also estimate, for example, the desired size of clothes according to the customer’s purchasing preferences, even with different size charts of different manufacturers.

What would you recommend to potential clients who want to get the most out of their online store search and user experience?

If you’re not sure if you need a better search, try Luigi’s Box for free in our free trial. We offer a 30-day free trial for self-service clients. It will give you an idea of what needs to be improved. However, if you have feedback from your target audience and colleagues that your search is not working as expected, don’t keep them waiting and try a three-month trial of Luigi’s Box Search. Its implementation is straightforward. Inserting a single script into the website header will take you three minutes, then you will generate a single XML feed, and we will take care of the rest.

If you are interested in more advanced functions, we can focus either on efficient product ranking based on margin, thus maximizing the profit, or continue with personalized recommendations to increase the revenue and the average order value.

What are the benefits of Luigi’s Box search tools?

• They help understand how to use data about customer buying behavior to increase revenue.
• The Autocomplete and the Search show results from the very first typed character.
• It can handle typos, foreign language names, jargon, singular and plural forms of words.
• Recommender helps to increase the average order value by smart suggestions of additional products for upselling and cross-selling
• The average increase in conversion rate from search is by more than 31 percent.
• Our products stand out for their simple implementation into any e-shop, using a one-line script in the page header or integration in the background via API.

Ignoring search engine optimization not only affects organic search rankings but also limits the ability to capture high-intent visitors searching for specific products. By addressing these gaps, e-shops can ensure that their search aligns with broader marketing strategy, bringing in more website visitors and increasing conversions.