Text search is the building block for a successful eCommerce search journey.

However, there are some common mistakes that retailers can make when implementing text search, resulting in poor search accuracy and low conversion rates. 

The 5 Mistakes to Avoid in eCommerce Search

1. Not Optimizing Your Search Terms 

One of the most important aspects of effective text search is ensuring that search terms are optimized for maximum accuracy in finding relevant products or information. 

What exactly does that mean? Considering factors such as spelling variations, synonyms, abbreviations, and other related words can help improve accuracy. 

But, how?

By using a robust eCommerce site search tool, search optimization is done automatically. 

For example, if a shopper searches for a “stripe” using YesPlz enhanced text search software, the algorithm will automatically consider other synonyms like “sleeveless top,” and alternative spellings like “striped.”  

Failing to optimize your terms can result in inaccurate results or missed opportunities when customers use different terminology than what you have provided in your database. 

2. Ignoring Relevancy Rules 

In fashion eCommerce, a relevancy rule is a set of criteria used to determine the relevance of a product or group of products to a specific search query or browsing behavior. These rules can be based on factors such as keywords, product attributes, and customer behavior, and are used to improve the search and navigation experience for shoppers.

Relevancy rules allow you to control how closely related a product must be before it appears in a query’s results list. 

Without these rules enabled, irrelevant items may appear at the top of searches due simply because they contain one or more keywords from the query – even if those keywords aren’t necessarily related to the original search query. 

But…how can a fashion eCommerce enable rules?

The answer is simple: by using an eCommerce site search software that allows relevancy rules to be enabled.

As you can probably tell, creating relevancy rules manually simply isn’t possible–but with the right software, it isn’t difficult to implement.

By setting relevancy rules correctly, you can ensure only truly relevant items appear first on searches and provide better experiences for your users by helping them find exactly what they need faster and easier than ever before!  

3. Not Utilizing Advanced Features 

Advanced features like auto-complete suggestions, spell checkers, fuzzy matching algorithms (which take into account typos), stop words (words excluded from queries), etc., all play an important role in improving user experience with text search tools by providing more accurate results faster than ever before.

Before choosing an eCommerce site search software, make sure that it includes the advanced features listed above.

Taking advantage of these advanced features will not only make searching easier but also increase conversions as users will be able to find exactly what they need without having to spend time manually entering multiple queries or sifting through pages upon pages of irrelevant content.

4. Overlooking User Feedback & Analytics Data 

Analytics data provides valuable insights into how people interact with your website’s content via its various channels including text search tools; this data should never be overlooked as it offers invaluable feedback about user behavior which can then inform future decisions regarding optimization efforts aimed at improving overall performance across all channels. 

Additionally, tracking user feedback is another great way to gain insight into how well certain features work–so don't forget about gathering this type of data too - it's just as important as analytics data when trying to understand where improvements could be made within existing systems/features being used today.

5. Not Testing Regularly & Making Changes As Needed 

Last but certainly not least - testing regularly is absolutely essential if you want optimal performance out of any system including those involving text search capabilities; without regular testing, changes won't get implemented properly nor will potential issues be identified early enough.

Testing can unlock valuable insights that your eCommerce may have never considered. 

Bonus: Make sure you have a strong eCommerce site search tool

An important note: optimization for text search is impossible without a strong eCommerce site search tool.

And, when choosing a text search tool–make sure it has the capability to update search terms to its dictionary.  

YesPlz AI offers enhanced text search with computer vision at its core, to tag richer product information from an image and use them to enhance the site search results. All of the above advanced features are not only available, but easy to use. 

An enhanced eCommerce text search can help you avoid these five common mistakes, ensuring a positive shopper experience and increasing search accuracy. 

Curious to see how it work with your website?Sign up for a free 20-min consultation