Last week, Brian Burstein of MarketingSherpa shared some useful tips on the SherpaBlog for maximizing your site search (a few were provided by our CEO, Shaun Ryan) in his post “On-site Search: How to help your customers find what they want (to buy).” Interestingly, as Brian reports, “According to the MarketingSherpa Ecommerce Benchmark Report, customers who use the search box on ecommerce sites convert at nearly three times the rate of general browsers. Yet, 52% of marketers graded their internal search a ‘D’ or ‘F.’”
It’s staggering that so many marketers give their site search such a poor grade. Whatever the reason, Brian’s post includes a variety of solid tips that are fairly easy to implement. I recommend you check it out, and commend Brian for providing this advice to online marketers as site search is a critical yet often overlooked feature of any website. What grade do you give your own site search? If it’s anything lower than a B+ (or even if you give it an A), it’s probably time to give this feature some attention.