Best Onsite Search Software & Tools

Onsite Search – The Most Important Feature on Websites

SEO and SEA are at the core of many marketing and social media activities to bring users to your own website. For these users to interact or convert, usability is crucial. Often, when we think of usability, we think of appealing designs or exciting navigation concepts, and rarely do we think about the onsite search. This is fatal, as one of the biggest levers for enchanting user-friendliness is the search function. It boosts customer satisfaction and, ultimately, sales. The conversion rate in B2C online shops is usually below 5% and only slightly higher in B2B. 

No matter how big the funnel is at the top, without a smart onsite search, the traffic is just one thing: expensively bought, because the users leave the digital offer without an interaction. The search function is one of the biggest sources of information. On average, 30% of users use the search function on a website. This value is usually over 50% for e-commerce platforms. 

What is being searched for? What trends are there? How do users search? What searches yield no hits? Which search terms convert well? Intelligent onsite search software offers the possibility to significantly increase customer satisfaction, the conversion rate, and ultimately sales. 

What Exactly is Onsite Search Software?

Onsite Search refers to your own, internal search function on the website. 

This consists of the search field and features such as the suggestion function (Auto-Suggest) and the filters (Facets) on the search results page.

Behind this is a software that takes care of retrieving information, often by fetching from databases. Onsite search software is a prerequisite for searchers to find the desired offer quickly and easily and to receive further inspirations. There are ready-made solutions from software providers and open source technologies. Standard systems often integrate open source technologies like Elasticsearch or Solr.

Who Needs Onsite Search Software?

Basically, any company that operates a website for its content and products can benefit from onsite search software. The search function built into most systems (e.g.: in shop or CMS systems) often is not sufficient for the needs of users and website operators. For systems with more than 20,000 searches per month, it is worth using a professional, external search solution, as the increase in the conversion rate already amortizes additional operating costs. With an onsite search solution, you can quickly achieve improvements and reach a solid level of search experience that can be continuously improved through further optimizations.

What are the Specific Benefits of Onsite Search Solutions?

A high-quality onsite search solution offers many advantages to both the operators of a website and the users.

Advantages for Users

• Fast and relevant search results
• Time saving through targeted search for brands, assortments, etc.
• Filtering of results
• Inspiration through categories, product suggestions
• Improvement of the search experience

Operators Profit from The Following

• Increase in conversion and ultimately in sales
• Understanding the customers
• Control of results e.g.: during promotions
• Liquidation
• Lower bounce rates
• Additional sales through features like personalization & recommendations

What Makes a Good Onsite Search

From Users' Perspective

The requirements of users for the search function roughly correspond to the learned handling of the major search engines like Google or Bing. 

• Error tolerance, e.g., for spelling mistakes
• Auto-Suggest function with matching keywords, categories, or individual items
• Filter functions to restrict search results with relevant filter options
• Fast response times

From Website Operators' Perspective

From a website operator's perspective, onsite search software should also offer the possibility to: 

• Influence and optimize search results. This includes linguistic fine-tunings such as synonyms to improve search result quality
• Control product order (ranking) in search results
• Make use of various features & criteria, e.g.: popularity, margin, inventory, delivery times to present customers with optimal search results.
• Create their own landing pages for search queries
• Marketing campaigns, e.g., in the form of banners

Easy integration of the Onsite Search Software into the existing system is relevant for many website operators. 

What Should Be Taken Into Account When Choosing an Onsite Search?

Finding the right onsite search software can be tricky with the multitude of providers, as there is no one best search technology for all.

The more precisely the requirements are defined, the better they can be mapped onto a solution. The comparison process involves getting an overview of:

• The range of functions offered
• Costs
• Performance
• Implementation effort

Popular Onsite Search Solutions Are:

Open-Source Solutions:

• Elasticsearch
• Open Search
• Solr

SaaS Solutions:

• DooFinder
• Algolia
• Bloomreach
• Empathy.co
• epoq
• FACT-Finder
• Findologic
• searchhub

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Even the best onsite search with the strongest algorithm, relevant features, and great performance needs good (product) data. If these are not available, they need to be optimized.

Attributes, harmonization, inventories, customer-specific prices are some relevant parameters. It is essential to remain critical and see your own data as an elemental building block of value creation. Good product attributes such as sizes or materials contain many important pieces of information to get good search results and entice users to purchase. 

The Good News

A superb onsite search – the combination of good data quality with efficient imports, a strong search algorithm, sensible features, and meaningful analytics, is overall one of the most efficient, fastest, and scalable tools for digital touchpoints. Continuous improvement and monitoring lead to deep customer understanding, new services, and expanded offers.

Intelligent Product Search: Not Just Doing the Job

Once installed, even an intelligent onsite search software does not answer all search queries by itself. Regular support of the onsite search is necessary and offers immense potential at the same time.

These are the tasks & topics:

• Control of hits and pushing of products (Seasonal assortments, content, campaigns, margins, sell-offs)
• Improvement of search result quality 
• Analysis & controlling 
• Further development of the search function & associated features such as recommendations
• Performance increases

These require resources in development and control to achieve the greatest possible effects. The extent of these measures depends on the goal prerequisites of the website operators and the size and diversity of the offer.