In this modern web era, you can almost find a search bar on every site you use. Site search is deployed to recognize consumer's intent so the results on the website can meet their expectation. However, it is not always the case. It is not impossible for a user to search for some particular product or service that they want, but ended up with another result. If you own a website offering various products and services, it is absolutely in your best interest to improve your site search so it can meet your consumer expectations. Here are three steps you can take to improve your site search engine:

1. Autosuggestion feature

Research on the current state of eCommerce site search found that 16% of site search does not support searching by product name or model number. 70% of the sites require users to search by the exact product name that the website used. For users that prefer to be specific with their product search, this could be a problem. 

Using an autocomplete feature can help a user to find the products that they want. Additionally, an autocomplete feature can help users to explore other types and models of the products, leading the user to increase the traffic on your site. 

2. Cater to all search types

For some users that know right what they want, searching by native language would be their choice. However, your user might not always search using English words. For example, they might be looking for a camera bag in Bahasa Indonesia, "Tas kamera", which may not return anything if your product descriptions are in english. For some sites do not support the synonym feature, this could be a problem. To improve your site search, you need to cater to all search keywords that your user is searching with. A synonym function can help in avoiding wrong search results when users are using different languages or terms, allowing you to meet their expectations.

3. Navigate search result page

There are many ways you can explore with your result page navigation. For instance, you can add a faceted search result. Faceted search results allow users to search for products based on the criteria you define. For example, when a user is searching for a shoe, you can set the filter the benchmark by price, brand, and shipping option.

Other than faceted search results, you can boost certain products that you want using product boosting features. Additionally, when a user searches for that product, the products that you promoted would come up first on the search result page.

There are many other ways you can explore to improve your site search engine. If you are looking for the next improvements you can do with your site, Altoshift can help you improve your on-site search engine. Starting from a synonym feature that could help you to meet the consumer's expectation, Altoshift can also help you in conducting your campaign, leading to more conversion and sales.