Multi-Channel Commerce & Retailing

I feel that for a long term loyal relationship, the end goals are aligned for both the retailer and the customer, which is to ensure that the product is the right fit and the customer is happy with the purchase.

Many a times customers know exactly what they want, the brand and the exact product in which case the job of the search engine becomes simpler, and it is a simple query. But, in this world of ever increasing choice and decreasing patience, customers need a lot of help in zeroing in to the product which best suits them. Traditionally, this has been done by ecommerce websites providing tools like buying guides which are predominantly static content and have their limitations. For an undecided customer, the search engine has to be equivalent of a customer service assistant on the shop floor helping to choose the right product.

For search to be effective and relevant, having a good understanding and analysis of how your customers search for products on your site is critical. It will of course vary depending on the characteristics of the business and the merchandise mix, it will also need to be ascertained by monitoring customer behaviour and usability inputs amongst other things.
It is very important to display the right products based on what the customer intends to buy. The intelligence in the search engine should be aimed to align the ‘intent’ to the displayed ‘content’. To elaborate this further, accommodating spelling errors, allowing synonyms (using a thesaurus), having searchable product descriptions is key to comprehend this 'intent' and then show matching 'content'.

Providing the search engine with all of the product’s attributes is the first step for it to be able to return the desired results. Ranking by contextual relevance for getting greater precision through natural language search is also key to doing this. The use of "faceted search" can then help customers narrow down on options and find the product they're searching more quickly and will have a big influence to getting quicker conversion and will influence the overall conversion rates as well. In the current online savvy world, the ability to filter out unwanted results is fast becoming an expectation and can directly affect overall customer satisfaction with a site.

We all understand the importance of personalisation and so taking it to the next level by applying it to the vital area of search can lead to increased customer loyalty and satisfaction. Displaying and prioritising results based on the segmentation data or additional information available with the retailer about the customer will lead to quicker conversion and increased customer satisfaction.
Having a smarter Search will ensure that the customers get to the final few products which match their criteria, and intent, however, ‘the final choice’ can be helped by providing the customer additional confidence that the product has been useful for others by providing them access to the reviews and ratings data.
Helping them understand what others are saying about it, going further even helping them in their analysis by having review comments and ratings data structured based on segments like age group, gender etc. and providing analytical tools to understand fitment to their situation will make a big difference in my opinion.

Many websites have incorporated reviews and ratings features however, the results do not mean much if the number and quality of reviews is not adequate. Encouraging good quality feedback from customers is important for the usefulness of this feature. Potentially, the effectiveness can be increased by linking the providing of this feedback to some benefits (even low value) like loyalty points, coupons etc.
So to conclude, in my opinion, a powerful, intelligent and personalised search, coupled with good quality reviews and feedback from customers enable quicker conversion and increases loyalty. Having said that, the main customer offer (competitive pricing, customer service etc.) is still of utmost importance.  If this is not the case then the retailer risks having their site used more as a research website and once zeroing on the product, customers can jump to competitors sites for the final buy.