Online stores and product catalogs need a search function so that customers can bypass any hierarchical navigation and find the things they want to buy. It's a form of customer service, like having a knowledgeable sales person who can answer questions accurately.

Many online stores have no search engine or an inadequate one: when customers can't find what they want, they may well leave and never return.

SearchTools Commerce Search Checklist

• Accept multiword keyword searches, without requiring SQL commands or Boolean operators.
  
• Find matches on some or all words as keywords, as well as phrases
  • Better to find something than nothing.
• Allow customers to enter product codes and product brand names as well as general topics.
  • Make repeat customers happy
• Default to searching all the product information, but recognize a few special fields, such as size, color and price (see faceted metadata search)
• Include synonyms, so a search for "red sweater" will find scarlet cardigans and magenta crew-necks.
• Include site information, such as order status and return processing.
• Index extensive product information, even if it's stored in back-end databases
  • Few database search engines are both easy to use and flexible, see the SearchTools Report on Database vs. Full-Text Search.
• Sort results so the most likely to be relevant items come first.
  • Perform user testing to learn what relevance means to customers
  • Analyze your search logs to find out what people ask for and where they go
  • Adjust the search indexing to include everything that's useful
• Format results listings to show the most valuable information:
  • Emphasize the matching text using bold or colors, so it's clear why the item was found.
  • For physical products, such as clothes or groceries, show pictures.
  • Show the most important elements, such as price, size, brand name or compatibility information.
  • Include inventory status, so it's clear what's available and what must be backordered.
• For searches which don't find any matches, provide a clear and helpful error page.
  • See the SearchTools Report on Search Failure and the report on No-Matches Pages
• Generate a search log, which store operators can consult for free market research:
  • what's popular
  • what's trending down
  • what customers look for that you don't carry
  • what misspellings and typos they commonly make.
    

Articles and Reports on Commerce Search

• E-retailers seek improved search engines ComputerWorld August 12, 2002 by Carol Sliwa
  Report from eTail 2002 conference about online commerce sites responding to user demand by improving their search engines. Describes how Talbot's implementation of EasyAsk increased the average order size when using search by 18%, and the number of shoppers who search and then purchase by 34%. Nieman Marcus chose iPhrase and Spiegel chose Endeca after extensive comparisons.
  
  
• When Searching Is No Longer Enough. Internet Retailer; April 2002 by Kurt Peters
  Discusses online store search engines: Mercado, EasyAsk, Endeca, and Netrics, referring to the 2001 Forrester report. Describes customer needs for technology that allows both searching and browsing by category or product attribute. Includes evidence of the good results at Tower Records with Endeca, but finds few examples of faceted metadata usage. Includes additional references to studies of e-commerce search engine demands and limits, suggesting significant changes from the traditional "relevance ranking" approach. Changes include recognizing the problems of a long search result, redirecting searches for brands or products not carried to similar available products, sorting and drilling down on product attributes, spelling correction and synonyms.
  
  
• Desperately Seeking Search Technology (Commentary) BusinessWeek Online, September 24, 2001 by Robert D. Hof
  Quotes eminent analysts from Jupiter, Patricia Seybold Group and Forrester to support the value of a good search engine on commerce web sites in particular. Recommends ultrafast updates, as exemplified by FAST on eBay, tolerance of misspellings [and typos], synonym recognition such as EasyAsk on LandsEnd and search fields on every page, like Ritz Interactive. Also suggests using Amazon-like recommendations and providing information stored in private product databases to web search indexers such as Google.
  
  
• The Search For Success InternetWeek, March 29, 2001 by Jody Dodson
  An expert in customer service for Internet business points out that fixing the site search may be much more cost-effective than complex CRM solutions. He recommends considering outsourcing using Ask Jeeves or a similar service; providing a content directory as well as a search engine; matching search form to function; knowing the audience and providing the appropriate search capabilities (such as product codes); and explaining the search functionality more clearly.
  
  
• Not All Site Features Turn Online Shoppers Into Buyers PricewaterhouseCoopers, March 6, 2001
  A survey of 547 Internet users in January of this year found that over three-quarters of the respondents use search features (77%). Search functionality is considered the most important feature for online shopping by 43%, beating product information (40%), when choosing where to shop: both features led customer service, personalization and wish lists in selecting sites. When deciding what to buy, search functions also pay an important role, although enlarged product images, availability and comparison guides are more directly involved.

• Building Web Sites With Depth Web Techniques, February 2001 by Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir
  In a discussion of e-commerce sites, these analysts point out that search engines are an area that could be a strength of online business, but are generally a waste of time. They recommend making sure that the search engine covers the "nonproduct needs" such as how to pay, check a gift registry, and return items. They suggest designing thoughtful results, especially when there is no item that matches a search exactly (see our report on No Matches Pages). Another way to reduce the number of results is winnowing, allowing users to narrow down the list.
  
  
• NNGroup report on e-commerce search engines NNGroup.com, late 2000
  focusing on user experience. It says very much the same things we've been saying about search forms, results pages and search failures. Includes some solid test data backing up the recommendations to use a search box, recognize synonyms, accept various operators and errors, show helpful results metadata, explain results, handle search failure, and perform extensive search log analysis. Well worth the $45 to download the PDF report. See also Search Tools Report on Search User Interface and User Experience.
  
  
• Must Search Stink? Forrester Report, June 2000 by Paul Hagen
  Focussed on ecommerce and B2B sites, this report describes the importance of site searching, and the problems with standard search engines. They emphasize that a simple term frequency algorithm for relevance rankings will often fail to return the best matches at the top of the list. It also points out how important content management, metadata and information architecture is for good search results.

  Recommendations include building a vocabulary and synonym listings so that searches for a specific term will find pages with all variants and equivalent terms, improving content management, and implementing good user interfaces to the search engine. They even have a section on the benefits of fixing search, showing how it makes bottom-line sense.

  Cost of search, mainly for e-commerce sites, is given at $150,000 for a search engine, $150,000 to integrate with existing databases and $60,000 for user interface and testing, along with an estimate of $4 per page or item for page titles, descriptions, removing duplicates and creating a controlled vocabulary.

  SearchTools Analysis of the Forrester Report

  I like this report a lot: it's clear on how important site search is and how traditional algorithms fail to retrieve and sort the results well. However, they don't emphasize the special issues that may arise in searching structured data (such as product catalogs), and they mix up retrieving relevant items with ranking (so that the relevant items appear on the first page). In addition, they don't understand how much people like a simple search field -- it's a Web convention that is now inescapable. And the cost is appropriate for a large e-commerce site, rather than a smaller or simpler site, such as an online magazine, small store, or corporate site.

Commerce Search Engines

• Atomz Search Service
  • Example: Olympus America
• AltaVista Search
  • Example: Nordstrom
• EasyAsk
  • Example: LandsEnd
• Endeca
  • Examples: Spiegel, Tower Records
• iPhrase
  • Example: Neiman Marcus Online
• Convera Retrievalware
• Mercado
  • Example: Sears
• MondoSearch
• Netrics
• Siderean Seamark (formerly Teapot) - faceted metadata search
  • Examples: Fortunoff Jewelry, BeachHouse.com
• Verity
  • Example: Cabelas Sporting Goods

Page Updated 2003-03-27