English
The Ultimate Guide to Internal Search
Implement an internal search feature on your website to gain deeper insight about your customers' interests and expectations. Track their intent and offer them relevant search results based on their online behavior.
What is an internal search?
Internal search is a feature that enables visitors to look for specific search terms or keywords written on the website by typing them into a search field.
Undoubtedly, the search function is a vital element on any website.
Regardless of how user-friendly and intuitive your website interface is, users would always prefer a more straightforward way of finding exactly what they are searching for.
Without the option of conducting an internal site search, visitors are more likely to abandon your site and go elsewhere to find what they need.
Why do you need an internal search?
Having an internal site search tool is a must-have for any online business. Here are the top 4 benefits of using internal search:
Better conversion rates
Customers who carry out website searches aren’t just casually browsing your site. They know exactly what they want, which means they are more likely to convert than those who don’t. Therefore, internal site search is directly linked to better conversion rates and revenue.
Improved user experience
According to research conducted by Baymard, customers really want an easy-to-use, improved search function to find what they are looking for more quickly and efficiently. You can deliver an exceptional user experience with the help of a good internal site search engine that leverages predictive search.
Better understanding of customers
By implementing site search, you get access to all of the search queries of every visitor to your website. It’s essentially a curated, aggregated list of your customers’ wants and needs. This way, if there’s something particular that customers want, you can ensure that they’ll find it in your e‑shop.
Greater competitive advantage
Many e‑commerce businesses often fail at implementing and refining their on-site search. Most of them simply don’t have the time, experience, or knowledge needed to improve their internal search functions, which puts the success of their online stores at risk. You can get a distinct edge over your competition by investing time in improving your site search functionality.
What features should an internal search have?
Here are some of the features and best practices that should be a breeze for a modern internal search.
Visibility
Make sure your search bar is clearly visible and instantly usable and not hidden behind a search icon. This will help customers find what they came to look for on your website immediately.
Autocomplete
As soon as customers start writing internal search queries, show them relevant, high-quality content right away - even before they click the search button. This is possible with the help of autocomplete.
Suggestions
If your search box offers suggestions, it should display the most relevant content first. This will help ensure a positive user experience, boost user satisfaction, and increase the click-through rate.
Typos
Users can make mistakes, typos, and other grammatical errors during the search. The search bar should be able to handle all that to avoid no-results searches.
Slangs & synonyms
If the zero results page comes up, you’re losing business. Your search box should be capable of managing synonyms and slangs, so that your users can have a seamless experience with your search options.
Query understanding
The search bar should be capable of working with long-tail queries and understanding your customers’ intent, so it can personalize better, offer accurate search results, and provide an excellent customer experience.
Pagination
Pagination is an essential part of your site performance. To give your customers a seamless browsing experience, opt for the ‘Load More’ pagination. It’s faster and more effective than conventional pagination.
Product ranking and relevance
When customers type a product category in your search bar and hit enter, make sure that your bestsellers in that category always appear on the first results page.
Speed
Ideally, the load time to get search suggestions is within 0.3 seconds after typing a character whereas complete search results should be displayed in no more than 2 seconds.
Is your internal search good enough?
Does your internal search engine have all these features? If not, it’s time to switch to a better tool. Book a demo call with one of our experts to find out how Luigi’s Box Search can boost your business.
Trusted by more than 2,000 online businesses
Read our case studies
Learn more about how Luigi's Box customers leverage advanced search & product discovery tools
search conversion rate
conversion rate of selected product segment
autocomplete conversions
average conversion rate
search usage
increase revenue
How to build an internal search on your website?
Looking to integrate search functionality into your website but not sure where to start? Here are three common ways to help you decide:
Build a search box from scratch
Building your own internal search bars sounds interesting. However, the process isn’t easy. It involves tons of steps and technical expertise (read: coding) to build a fully functional search box.
Moreover, using artificial intelligence for better search results and user experience can also be time-consuming and difficult.
Use an open-source tool
Some open-source tools may be tricky to set up and use, while others may lack the user-friendly interfaces or features you essentially need. Moreover, you often don’t receive the level of customer support you’d expect.
As open-source software is not developed in a controlled environment, security could be a big concern.
Use a ready-made solution
The best option is to use an industry-recognized ready-made tool like Luigi’s Box that was being fine-tuned for years. You don’t need as strong of an in-house skill set to get up and running.
Our Search tool uses built-in workflows out of the box that make getting off the ground much faster and more secure than building from scratch or using an open-source tool.
Internal search leaders
If you are considering picking a vendor, here are the top 4 search software tools based on G2 ratings.
-
Luigi’s Box
Luigi's Box has all the tools customers need to discover your products efficiently. Powered by AI, it can deal with typos, synonyms, or diacritics, and much more
-
Algolia
Algolia is an API platform that helps businesses maximize the speed of search and discovery.
-
Yext
Yext allows you to build AI-powered search experiences based on natural language processing and using a multi-algorithm approach.
-
Searchspring
Searchspring provides relevant results when users search for products on your site, taking into account spelling mistakes or missing details.
Leverage internal search from Luigi's Box
Luigi's Box integrates seamlessly into your e‑commerce website. All you have to do is send us your product feeds, and our integration team will take care of everything else.
Luigi's Box reviews
Given our size, Luigi's Box brings us over €100,000 a year without much hard work for a price that was immediately returned multiple times.
Luigi’s Box massively streamlines shopping for our customers. Moreover, they developed several features for us that help manage products in our e‑shop.
The most significant contribution of Luigi’s Box to EXIsport is an improvement in customer experience. The quicker they find what they search for, and the more relevant the search query is, the higher... more
Luigi’s Box is a guarantee of a professional approach. As the search specialists, they lead us to our goals much faster.
Luigi's Box Autocomplete increased our conversions by 33%, even when its use dropped by 30%.
We’ve been using Luigi’s Box since 2017. In addition to our search conversion rate increase by 600%, the service also enhanced our in-store customer service.
Luigi’s Box is a very progressive tool, which complements our existing analytical data. Its usage led not only to higher conversion rates for our e‑shop but helped us keep high standards of customer... more
Recommender is a useful and inspirational resource for our customers to discover Powerlogy's products. How do we know that? Our average shopping cart value has been rising dramatically.
Luigi’s Box was a real eye-opener for us. E‑shoppers often forget to care about customer experience and invest too many resources into advertising. Luigi's Box showed us what we could gain if we... more
Luigi's Box does a great shop and our company loves their tools.
Dive into users' behavior with Luigi's Box Analytics
Get insights into what your users are searching for, what they struggle to find, and how you can improve their overall search experience.
Request a free demo to see how Analytics can help you improve search depth and better understand your customers or set up a free account and start getting search insights immediately.
Try Analytics for free
Track crucial metrics to measure the performance of your online shop. We offer a free 14-day trial for Analytics.
Frequently asked questions
What is an internal search?
Internal search allows visitors to look for a specific word or search phrase on a website by typing it into a search field.
Why is internal search so important?
A great internal site search experience contributes to potential customer satisfaction, which drives sales for ecommerce sites. Features such as autocomplete, voice search, a well-designed search results page, and search filters work together to simplify the search process, thereby improving customer loyalty and conversion rates.
How to optimize internal search results?
For internal search engine optimization, it is important to track metrics like exit rates, search refinements, or zero-result search queries. This will help you add an extra layer of information to your internal search reports and audits, allowing you to make more data-driven search suggestions. Another tip is to use Google Analytics segments to understand user behavior on your site and incorporate those insights into your search.
What's the best way to build an internal search on my online shop?
While it’s possible to build an internal search feature from scratch or to use an open-source tool, we strongly recommend using ready-made software like Luigi’s Box for a number of reasons, such as better security, faster performance, 24/7 support, improved internal search experiences, and more accurate results.
