Five ways to improve on-site search

A new article on Search Engine Journal reports that, for starters, your whole marketing team should be on the same page when it comes to site search.

Having a website search function is critical to any business’s success. However, many have a difficult time providing customers with relevant search results and gaining actionable insights from the data. People expect to find exactly what they search for on your website. Failing to do so inevitably sends them to another site that better meets their needs. Neglecting your site’s search functionality can seriously hamper user experience and overall performance. Here are five ways marketers can improve site search and win over more customers.

1. Prepare the marketing team: Your whole marketing team should be on the same page when it comes to site search. Signals can get crossed fairly easily with so many people publishing content and developing site technologies, so everyone should work together to create a cohesive search experience.
2. Analyze customer experience: It’s important to distinguish between search and customer experience. Even if customers are finding what they need via site search, you can’t neglect their experience following the search. What happens after they search is the metric that matters most.
3. Automate A/B testing: It’s time for marketers to apply A/B testing to site search. Test and compare search algorithms, then ask site users which functionalities help them the most. This will help keep your system updated and relevant to searchers.
4. Use machine learning and AI correctly: AI is closely related to marketing automation, and there are two types marketers routinely use within campaigns. The toolbox version of AI takes the form of site kits that allow your team to interact with the system and make manual changes as needed. Conversely, AI as automation utilizes technologies that are embedded within the system itself to improve task efficiency and free up your team to perform their primary marketing tasks.
5. Start using search as a service: Many businesses continue to take on the maintenance tasks of site search engines themselves, though there are many external vendors who provide search engine software as a service. This lets marketing teams focus more on their campaigns while shifting the responsibility of search engine maintenance to a 3rd party.