The dynamism of the market has made shopping a recreational activity. It is not just about the utility aspect but also certain specifications needed by shoppers. Trust me; shoppers hardly compromise on their experience due to exceptional search filters that help them reach their ultimate goal. Whether it’s the budget or the product’s colour, there are many shopping options combined, and only quick product discovery can save shoppers running around in circles trying to find their desired products.
How Shoppers Search For Products Today?
Your shoppers are not dependent on just your brand! That’s what differentiates shoppers in the current era. Shoppers are research-oriented due to the availability of several e-commerce platforms. While you can categorise your shoppers depending on their preferences and decisions, most shoppers inevitably look for an easy-to-understand web interface. This helps them discover products that match their budget, delivery time, and other requirements.
Additionally, product filtering is prominent to attract shoppers and show them exactly the product they choose to buy. Higher relevance in product search results helps gain shoppers’ attention, allowing them to shortlist the most appropriate options. Shoppers who cannot filter products in a brick-and-mortar store expect the e-commerce store to do the heavy lifting through sophisticated search filters.
Research suggests that only 16% of websites provide a good filtering experience, making it vital for you to contribute to this 16%. Filters work well because they are not only definite but also trigger the shopper to rethink their preferences, spending budget, willingness, expected day of delivery, and product utility.
How Does A Search Filter Aid Better Product Discovery?
Shoppers across the world access the same website for the same products. What makes the difference in your e-commerce website? It’s the destination you create for your target audience through better product discovery features. Product discovery enables your shoppers to find the right products and explore other options. This also helps them browse through upcoming brands or features in a particular product category.
When shoppers look for a particular product, they are somewhat sure about the features, budget, colour, type, or specification. An e-commerce search filter helps them navigate to products that suit their preferences. Let’s say a search filter that displays different sizes of footwear. This also triggers shoppers to check the size before randomly scrolling through multiple products. In such situations, a search filter option opens a broader selection of ideas and categories before making a wise purchase decision.
Why You Should Integrate A Search Filter On Your E-Commerce Store?
One of the aspects that can distinguish you from your competitors is the ease of shopping you deliver to your site visitors. And an intelligent search filter can set you apart. Check out why you should integrate a search filter for enhanced shopper engagement.
Better User Experience
Shoppers visit your site for a reason! They expect a smooth experience over another shopping website. Search filters provide an easy way for shoppers to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. Find the product they like among 100s of products you sell. A search filter helps shoppers narrow down their search for the desired product. Research suggests that a fantastic user interface creates better shopping experiences that lead to higher sales.
Easy Shopping Search
Unless you sell something specific and exclusive, there will always be a hundred other websites selling similar stuff. However, only a few e-commerce websites enable ease of shopping, significantly aiding better product discovery through intelligent site search and search filters. It would help if you did everything possible to direct shoppers to their desired products. Smart search filters can help you deliver that excellent product discovery experience.
Organised Data
Most e-commerce websites allow shoppers to sort products by price or popularity. Currently, websites can only display data based on search filters. Hence, it would help if you integrated accurate search filters to display products in the most convenient and desired manner for the users. If shoppers search for products in specific ways, you can create a filter for that. For example, a filter that lists products that are on sale. Or a filter that lists complementary products, etc.
Most Important Features Your Search Filter Should Have
Category-Specific Filters
Category filters enhance the functionality and utility of search filters. You can also choose to add specific attributes to narrow down the shopping search.
Let’s say you offer footwear for women. It is good to have price, relevancy, and delivery time filters. However, be category-specific by offering further options, including wedding, casual, office wear, and party. Such filter options make it super convenient for users to insert their choices, thereby experiencing an outstanding shopping experience.
Easy Language
Do you remember the last time you shopped from the munchkins section of an e-commerce store? Such is the case with filters. Your shoppers understand the word ‘kids’ and are unfamiliar with ‘munchkins’. On-site search for e-commerce is highly affected by the usage of language. It would help if you designed your filters in a shopper-friendly manner.
Additionally, your shoppers may not understand industry jargon or advanced English. Always mention sizes and numbers according to your primary target audience’s understanding.
Zero Results
When your e-commerce search filter cannot find products, the website is sure to display zero results. This leads to bad shopping experiences as the shopper cannot find the product. Even when there might be an error in typing or using the right word, they never show zero results in their searches.
Always make sure you offer relatable products that match search intent. While you track the real-time browsing behaviour, make it simpler for shoppers to know if the products displayed make sense to them. Even if your website shows relatable products, the shopper is more likely to do another search. This leads to trial and error in the product search process, but the shopper would not get frustrated.
Right Positioning
Finding search filters is tricky when you land on a new website. As shoppers arrive across the globe through various social media platforms, creating the proper position for the filtering option is prominent. Research suggests that 69% of shoppers always look towards their left for navigation of the search filter.
Understand your product and e-commerce store personality; this helps you decide an accurate position for the search filter bar. While the sidebar is a more traditional position, some websites display filters at the top. It is your call to understand how smooth or different the experience you wish to provide to the users.
Multiple Filters
The buying decision is a lengthy process that takes essential things into account. From searching for the product to reaching the payment stage, shoppers will likely spend more than 40 minutes looking for varieties. This is the general case where shoppers have no specific idea about what to buy. In such scenarios, multiple search filters help shoppers to narrow their search or intent.
Let’s say your website sells gifts for most occasions, with filters such as price, delivery time, popularity, colour, and type. Now, this is good, but what’s excellent is also adding occasions, important life events, gifts for dad, gifts for mom, and others. This allows shoppers to select the right filter, choose the delivery time, sort the budget and then make a quick buying decision. Multiple search filters also help narrow the search, showing specific products precisely as the shoppers require.
Best E-Commerce Websites That Have The Best Search Filters
Amazon
Amazon made its mark by transforming the entire e-commerce industry by bringing thousands of products and making it easy for shoppers to find what they desire and buy. It started at a low price and provided an excellent user experience. Currently, Amazon delivers the best filters that help shoppers sort products. Even if your shopper is looking for a diary, Amazon provides specific categories in the search bar and filters. Undoubtedly, the e-commerce giant is leading the way in product discovery by understanding the importance of a particular search filter for every product search.
Nike
Buying footwear through a basic shopping search is a tedious process. But, Nike changes the show through a detailed search filter. The Nike e-commerce store has different product categories listed under the filter. The site is particular about the shoe height, colour, closure type, technology, material, benefits, and the shoe’s purpose. It also displays the bestsellers, trending and fresh arrivals, making it convenient for shoppers to find what they intend to buy.
Kapiva
Kapiva, a health-based organisation, offers products for skin, weight loss, dieting, and other categories. You can find an excellent sorting of different product categories to help shoppers to find the desired product. This e-commerce store helps shoppers filter products based on product type, solution, and ingredients. Such sorting allows genuine shoppers to browse the required ingredients and quickly buy what they need.
Shop at Culture
Shop at Culture offers men’s and women’s clothing with impressive product categorisation. You can find a list of clothing and accessories to navigate the desired requirement. This website provides filters to sort age groups, select colour, and size, choose the designer, preferred gender, and sort by price. This helps enables brand-conscious shoppers to only buy from a particular designer. It offers the filter to select the desired pattern along with a filter to check if the product suits your gender.
Takeaway Points
Search filters help you transform your website, offering a top-notch shopping experience. Better product discovery leads to shoppers spending more time on your site. More time they spend, the more the chances of making a purchase and you make a sale.
Wizzy Can Transform Your Site Search And Search Filter
Wizzy is a super-smart site search engine and filter created exclusively for e-commerce websites and apps. Wizzy smart site search engine is built on cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning that quickly understands each word from the search query and shows the most relevant search results. Visit Wizzy.ai to learn more.
