Why Can't I Find What I Want?

Hot Topic: Onsite Search

If a customer cannot find what they are looking for, then they will leave a site without making a purchase and possibly never come back. This is a powerful statement, and is the reason why retailers spend so much time and money trying to perfect their search functionality.

BizRate Research ran a "Hot Topic" study in Q1 2009 to uncover how customers search for products, their mindset, and the tools they expect to be available to help them find that perfect little black dress...or television...or gift for a friend. We launched the questions across the majority of our Network of retailers.*

Check out some of the key findings:

1. Most customers (62%) come to a site knowing exactly what they want. In categories such as Apparel, browsing is more of a factor (50% come to an Apparel site to browse).
   
2. The Search Box (49%) and Menus/Tabs (47%) are the most popular search methods - make them intuitive, easy to find and ensure your algorithms produce relevant results.


3. "Mixed Relevant and Irrelevant Results" was the top reason the Search Box was ineffective (16%), while "Produced Too Many Results" was the top reason for Menus/Tabs (26%)


4. Make sure you have a "View All" option. Customers picked "View All Choices On One Page" as most important in helping them find what they want the next time they shop for that particular item (14%).


5. Provide a variety of sorting and narrowing options. Customers want control; they want to be able to arrange search results in a way that makes sense to them. 62% want to control either the sorting or narrowing (or both) vs. having predetermined groups, such as "most popular" (24%).


6. Overall, customers find Brand/Model (13%), Sale/Clearance Items (9%) and Price (9%) to be the most important attributes in locating their coveted item (outside of "View All Choices On One Page").


7. These top three can differ depending on your category or business. For example, if you are an Apparel retailer, especially a private labeled retailer, then looking for products by Sale/Clearance Items (14%), Size (11%) and In-Stock and Available (10%) are most important for your customers. For Office Supplies retailers, Brand/Model (18%), Item/Catalog No. (12%) and Price (12%) are most important.
   

I'll be posting results from some of our other "Hot Topic" studies, so please stay tuned! If you are interested in learning more about the "Hot Topic" program, then please contact us. We welcome suggestions for future topics - leave a comment with your ideas!

*For this "Hot Topic" study, 107,224 consumers submitted responses Network-wide; 32,452 of which were Apparel purchases and 20,401 of which were Office Supplies purchases. Survey responses were collected from January 27 - April 15, 2009.

"Hot Topic" Program - What Is It?

Every quarter, BizRate Research launches a study as part of our "Hot Topic" program. "Hot Topic" is a way for us to gather data and glean insights on topics of importance to e-commerce, and to share this data with retailers.* Over the past two years of the program, topics have ranged from the nuts and bolts of e-commerce (Onsite Search, Email Marketing, Customer Support), to emerging trends (Mobile Commerce).

While retailers always have the option to create custom questions, they are not able to benchmark this data (as it is unique to them). One of the great things about the "Hot Topic" program is that retailers can benchmark their results against one of our Standard Categories (e.g. Apparel, Office Supplies, Electronics - BizRate's Network represents 18% of e-commerce**) or against a custom benchmark that they determine.

We'll be sharing some of the Network and Category level results in upcoming posts. If you are interested in learning more about the "Hot Topic" program, then please contact us. We welcome suggestions for future topics - leave a comment with your ideas!


*The "Hot Topic" report is available for a fee to retailers that offer the BizRate Point-of-Sale Survey to their buyers. To join our Network, please create an account.
**Excluding travel and services.

Enabling The Voice of the Consumer

Over 12 years ago, with the introduction of our Customer Feedback & Ratings platform, BizRate.com innovated the web’s first retail customer satisfaction feedback loop. This widely adopted platform enables the voice of the consumer to openly provide feedback to retailers and other shoppers and simultaneously gives retailers the tools to listen to their customers and measure their satisfaction.

So pervasive is the platform's use that, since its inception, it has captured over 100,000,000 consumer opinions from more 13,000 retailers. Given that every day, over 350,000 online shoppers are invited to rate their just completed shopping experience, it represents one of the more prolific sources of user generated content on the web. Retail brands as widely recognized as Saks, J. Crew, Ralph Lauren, Staples, Victoria’s Secret, REI and Zappos have been using the feedback loop and ratings platform for years to continuously monitor their customers’ satisfaction levels and to benchmark themselves against industry peers. And, retailers without quite the name recognition as those just mentioned but no less committed to their customers’ happiness also rely on this feedback loop. Names like Autobarn.com, backcountry.com, WorldOfWatches.com, and WineChateau.com not only use the platform to listen to their customers, but to help build their merchant reputation, which they accomplish – in part – when they become Customer Certified.

We are encouraged that retailers like Black Helmet Apparel actually celebrate their achievement in becoming Customer Certified as they did in a recent tweet. It’s something worth celebrating because retailers know that their customers use the BizRate feedback loop to express their frustration or, in the case of Amy Meehan, share their delight in how they’re treated by the stores at which they shop. Amy tweeted that she used the BizRate to successfully resolve an order fulfillment issue with MAC Comestics. And, I too have taken delight from the response I get from retailers when talking to them through the megaphone that is the BizRate survey. In May, I placed an order Ralph Lauren; I used the BizRate survey to express my surprise that standard shipping might take as many as 10 days (who can blame me when I’ve grown accustomed to Amazon Prime and Zappos’ free overnight shipping?!). Within 1 hour of submitting my feedback, I received an email from Ralph Lauren customer support that satisfactorily addressed my comment.

As effective as it is, the BizRate Customer Feedback & Ratings platform is not without limitations. A personal frustration is the absence of a social web that ties together all the Bizrate Merchant Ratings & Reviews. With all the ratings attributed to Online Shopper (the generic ID that we associate to all our reviewers), I have no idea who shopped where. Perhaps, I’d ascribe more credence to the reviews of a top 100 reviewer or to someone who rates multiple stores. We do know, though, that some shoppers have rated multiple purchases across a number of different stores. In fact, some dedicated customers have provided feedback to the same store for over 6 years. I, for one, would like to unmask this elusive Online Shopper and give her/him an identity by way of an account that lets them catalog and update their ratings and reviews of the stores at which they shop. I expect we’ll be able to do that in the coming year.

Going forward, we’d like to use this forum to showcase how retailers use the BizRate Customer Feedback & Ratings platform to listen to their customers, build their reputations and create long-term loyalty. We’ll also use it to provide more detail around the portfolio of products that comprise the platform and to introduce new features. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact us.