Approximate Search Solutions for Online Shops and Ecommerce Site Search

Usability Increases Conversion Rates

A user-friendly online store requires catalog search that extends beyond a basic search results pages.  It requires a real information architecture approach.  The integration of the navigation system, the search interfaces, and the catalog taxonomy (categories) makes all the difference.  Just like in a retail store, browsing takes users towards purchase opportunities, but if shoppers get confused or bored, they leave!  Exorbyte's ecommerce site search solutions give online retailers the control necessary to optimize conversion rates while improving user satisfaction and loyalty.

Experience shows that search traffic may increase by as much as 5-12% by simply adding approximation features to search inputs and search results pages. A store that makes it easy to find the correct products attracts more users deeper in its inventory. But which features are essential?

How user-friendly is your search engine?

People only become search browsers when they are confident in the search system's ability to respond to their queries appropriately. Too often this is not the case. The main reason behind today's "not found" results in online retail are common data errors such as:

users typos, spelling errors, incomplete product titles, erroneous category choices,

vendors mislabeling their offerings, data errors in catalogs, misclassifications, missing synonyms to a product label,

online retailer inventory with no taxonomy (categories), no synonym dictionary, no "did you mean" functionality, no spell checking system, no phonetics-based search, no ranking of results (by relevance, biggest sellers, promos, inventory status, etc.).

"Not found"

Do users know how to spell product names such as "DeskJet 970 cxi" or "DeskJet 970cx i"?.

Does your synonym dictionary include the more than 100 spellings of Hewlett Packard?

Do you know what percentage of your "Not Found" queries would lead to conversions if you always offered the closest alternatives to the search query?

It’s not surprising that 15-25% of all queries are misspelled. As a result users are frustrated. Or searches contain synonyms of the database records.

For these reasons an ecommerce site search engine must be able to handle incorrect spellings, British vs. American spelling, word fractions, word swaps, phonetic spellings, singular/plural, synonyms and typos. And ideally the approximate combination of several search fields like “What” and “Where” to efficiently navigate through large volumes of information.

Does your search engine give full access to your data?

Direct benefit: search satisfaction. Indirect benefit: trust

A powerful search solution like MatchMaker SearchNavigator widens the narrow search corridor of exact search. The user receives helpful results despite misspellings, alternative spellings, etc.

Ultra-fast approximate search

MatchMaker is ultra-fast: even with millions of database records, the system responds within milliseconds, resulting in highly satisfied users. In addition the results ranking is completely transparent, which is important for optimizing performance.

Independent of the database - Fast implementation

MatchMaker runs in parallel to existing data infrastructures. This allows the usage of low-cost hardware, requires minimal changes to the existing IT-infrastructure and provides database independence. The implementation is fast and simple and can be completed within days. The architecture guarantees full scalability and usually reduces the database load.

Synonym dictionaries

The search performance of MatchMaker can be further enhanced by the addition of alias dictionaries and various others. Exorbyte offers a powerful software tool to develop alias lists from query logs.

Further Information:

MatchMaker SearchNavigator

MatchMaker Search