Predictive Search: Why Is It Essential for a Modern E‑Shop

We’re all leading hectic lives today. With more and more responsibilities on our plate, we’re constantly looking for tools that’ll simplify our tasks for us.

When it comes to online shopping, it’s safe to say people only visit shops that make the buying process as easy and fast as possible. No one has the time to spend hours searching for a particular product, so potential customers will quickly leave your shop if it does not seem you have what they’re looking for.

To avoid that situation, it’s crucial to ensure your clients can easily find what they need. That’s exactly where predictive search comes into play, and here you can learn more about why it’s an essential addition to every modern e‑shop.

A little bit about predictive search

Before we tackle predictive search features, it’s necessary to say something more about it. So, what is predictive search exactly?

As its name suggests, the purpose of the predictive search is to predict what the users are looking for and come up with relevant product suggestions that’ll allow clients to find what they need in just a few seconds. While the autocomplete process might seem simple at first glance, a lot is happening in the background to make predictive search suggestions possible.

Essentially, predictive search solutions rely on the analytics of past user behavior, search history, geolocation, and other factors to predict what the users might be interested in. When users enter a search query into the search bar, predictive search analyzes each letter to show relevant suggestions as the user types.

Popular search engines, including Google Search, first used autocomplete. However, predictive technology has evolved significantly since then, and many companies and organizations, including e‑commerce businesses, now use it.

By using the predictive search feature, businesses can reduce the time and effort required to find the products, services, and information customers are looking for. This allows businesses to provide a more efficient and personalized shopping experience for their customers, which is in itself a source of unbridled power in today’s highly competitive market.

How predictive search helps modern e‑shops

Almost every website has a search field where visitors can type in a search term and easily find what they need without having to scroll through the entire website. Nevertheless, not all companies are dedicated to improving their search function, which often leads to a poor search experience.

The autocomplete feature has numerous benefits for an e‑commerce business, including the ones mentioned below.

Improved user experience

Offering a better search experience results in an improved user experience. Visitors who can use the search bar and find what they’re looking for quickly and easily instantly become happy customers. Therefore, a quality predictive search function can improve the user experience and motivate your customers to return.

Higher conversion rate

By ensuring your visitors can find what they need, you’re automatically increasing the conversion rate of your business. As a result, customers won’t leave your website frustrated. Instead, they’ll place an order and will probably come back again if they’re satisfied with the products and service, which leads to a higher conversion rate.

Better customer service

Providing relevant queries in the search form and ensuring the visitors are satisfied with the search option leads to better customer service. Not only does good customer service support the buyers, but it also helps e‑commerce businesses gain a better understanding of the customers. Staying in touch with your target audience has genuinely never been easier.

Greater competitive advantage

With an improved user experience, higher conversion rate, and better customer service, an e‑commerce business can quickly secure a competitive advantage over other companies in the same industry. Not all modern e‑shops are equipped with a faceted search feature, so this is a perfect opportunity for companies to implement something that’ll make them stand out.

Useful tips for implementing predictive search

If you’re wondering how to implement predictive search functions into your e‑commerce website, you’ve come to the right place. While you may think implementing these search settings is pretty straightforward, there’s more to the process than meets the eye.

Namely, it’s crucial to offer onsite search without sacrificing user interface or rendering speed. That’s often more challenging than it might seem, which is where these helpful tips might come in handy.

Make your search bar visible

If your site visitors know exactly what they’re searching for, they will likely use the search function to find the products quickly. Therefore, your search bar needs to be visible and easily accessible to everyone.

Some e‑commerce businesses include only the search icon, which isn’t the best idea. Not only is it less visible than a search bar, but it also requires visitors to click on it if they want to use it. Remember to include the entire search box and make it easily accessible from every page on your website for the best results.

Offer relevant suggestions

The more detailed your product suggestions are, the better. Since the purpose of the predictive search is to offer customers products, they might be interested in; the recommendations should include the product’s name, brand, product category, thumbnail photo, and any other details you might find crucial.

Having all this information available at their fingertips makes visitors more likely to check out the recommended products and even purchase them.

Include the autocomplete feature

Autocomplete is another helpful feature that’ll make a difference for your clients. The purpose of autocomplete is to provide automatic query suggestions as soon as the user starts typing. Autocomplete cuts the time required for a search query and speeds up the whole process since clients don’t have to finish their queries manually before getting what they came for.

It’s important to say the autocomplete feature is almost everywhere nowadays. However, with that said, modern e‑shops are often expected to have autocomplete feature as part of their search process, so not having it could be a huge disappointment for contemporary online shoppers.

Use artificial intelligence for query understanding

The power of artificial intelligence is everywhere around us. All newer technologies and solutions heavily rely on AI, and predictive search for e‑commerce businesses isn’t an exception. When your site visitors enter a search term, you want to make sure they get exactly what they’re looking for, even in the case of long-tail keywords.

Basic systems might fail to understand more complex queries, but that’s what AI is for. AI and ML can understand even the most complicated queries and provide customers with instant search results. With such solutions by your side, increasing the conversion rate is a piece of cake.

Add synonyms and slang to the database

How many times did you search for a particular product only to find out it was listed under a different name? A high-quality predictive search tool can recognize various terms as synonyms or slang for certain products and thus help customers find what they need, even if they use an entirely different term.

Let’s say you’re looking to purchase a new sofa. You enter the term into the search box, but nothing comes back. Naturally, you’ll leave the site thinking the brand doesn’t sell any sofas. However, adding synonyms and slang to the database can result in a completely different experience. So, whether you use the term sofa, couch, loveseat, divan, or any other related word, you’ll find what you’re looking for.

Count on typos in the search input

Did you ever miss out on a good product just because of the simplest typo? We already mentioned that people use the search box to find a specific product quickly. That means they’re often in a hurry, and typos aren’t uncommon in such instances. Nevertheless, e‑commerce businesses probably double-checked how they named their products before launching them, and they shouldn’t contain any typos.

Fortunately, the predictive search can spot typos and recommend products closest to the inserted keyword. This feature is a nice touch for every e‑commerce website and will motivate more customers to continue shopping on your website.

Pay attention to product relevance and ranking

If you have a lot of items in your assortment, using a single keyword can result in thousands of product matches. If that happens, how can you ensure the customers find what they want, considering they probably won’t be going through all of the suggested products?

Product relevance and ranking are here to sort all of the matches accordingly. Most e‑commerce brands sort their products by popularity, so all of their best-sellers are on top. That way, they offer their best products immediately and increase the chance of a customer going through with the purchase.

Don’t compromise the search speed

Having a wide array of products certainly has its pros and cons. One of the significant disadvantages is the decreased search speed when clients are looking for a specific product. Naturally, the more products you have, the longer the system will take to go through them all and select only the relevant ones.

However, that doesn’t have to be the case. Many modern solutions offer impressively fast predictive search solutions that don’t require e‑commerce brands to sacrifice their search and render speed to provide relevant product suggestions.

Conclusion

Predictive search is making its way as one of the crucial additions for every modern e‑commerce business. As the ultimate way to help potential and existing customers find what they want to purchase quickly and easily, solutions offering this feature are certainly in high demand right now.

If you’re running an online shop, predictive search is exactly what you need for your business. Besides improving the user experience, it’ll also improve your conversion rate and increase sales. So head over to Luigi’s Box and select your ideal product.

Frequently asked questions