Improving Click Through Rate when faced with no results

One of the main reasons you might decide your eCommerce store needs a more sophisticated search is wanting your shoppers to find what they need quickly, or at least let them see something they find interesting along the way. For that reason, it’s rather unfortunate when both shop owners and shoppers see the No Results page.

Seeing the No Results message is the biggest annoyance of a searching journey, causing frustration and causing shoppers to leave your site before really seeing what they came for. Therefore, the best way to stop this is to use the necessary tools to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Let’s take a look at some moments you might receive No Results searches, and how to use tools within Motive Commerce Search to establish product connections, boost relevant ones and take some other actions to turn No Results into opportunities.

Identifying when and why No Results occur

In order to mitigate where the search bar returns no results, we need to understand when this happens. The Analytics in the Motive Playboard allow you to see stats of how your shoppers interact with your search, including which search terms return no results.

It is key to understand which terms appear on the Searches with no results section of the analytics page and keep track of how those terms evolve over time as you introduce changes to your configurations, and anticipate customer demand.

Although the situations may vary deeply depending on the nature of your shop, we have seen some interesting recurrent gaps in the No Results cases. You can see below some of the some potential situations you should look out for.

Same product, different names

We might call the same thing by different names depending on the level of specification, regional variations or even by mistake. When you spot a No Results search, the first step should be to determine whether you already have a product in your catalogue that can be linked to that search.

If you find there are various products that are directly related to the No Results search, you can create a Synonym that matches the search term with the products you want to suggest for that search. You could, for instance, create a synonym for “jogger” and “track pants” so the same results will be returned for both searches.

For situations that aren’t perfect matches like the previous example, you can use Business Rules to create a boosting rule. Used like this, a boosting rule could display a product with a name that is similar from the No Results query. For instance, you could boost products including “zebra print” for “animal print” searches to make sure shoppers will find results for them.

When people search for seasons, not products

Another set of searches that sometimes go unnoticed are those for the names of a sales period or season, as we mentioned in our Get your shop ready for Black Friday post. Sometimes, shoppers just search for words like “Sales” or “Spring” to get a more general view, so you should take advantage of this quirk and configure your search accordingly.

You can help shoppers see the most relevant results for those searches by configuring Business Rules to boost the products of your partnerships and promotions. On top of that, you can even create Banners that give them a more visual approach to that season and direct shoppers to certain campaigns.

Even if your shoppers search for more abstract things that can be found outside of your search, like “stores” or “opening hours”, you can create banners for those No Results searches that can link them to pages showing what they were looking for.

Don’t miss out

Being alert when No Results searches happen is vital to understanding customer trends and spotting room for improvement and growth, so it’s a great idea to keep track of the most relevant searches over time and how they evolve.

Once you know what searches are the ones without results and continue using the different tools available, you’ll be able to see which one fits each specific case. The general standpoint is making an effort to understand how your shoppers search and knowing what you want them to see.

The No Results message does not necessarily need to be a traumatic experience, but rather a learning curve to understanding your shop, your search, your shoppers and your products.