Ecommerce retailers often notice that not all their customers are created equal; some provide more revenue than others. It is crucial for businesses to identify these customers to maximize profits and minimize customer acquisition costs. We recently discovered a startling site search trend at Unbxd - nearly 50% of the 20 million daily queries we serve are from repeat visitors. Leads from repeat visitors aren't just qualified leads for ecommerce sites, they're also cheap to acquire. Basically, these users are the most valuable to a business.

The above statistic is a result of the trend that we’ve seen on most of our customers’ sites and this is possibly a trend on your ecommerce site too. If yes, do you know if it is easy or difficult for your loyal customers to search on your site?

How can you find out?

Though your site search data gives information about your search performance, it says almost nothing about customer behavior & how usable they find your site search. Try looking deeper and asking yourself some basic questions to analyze if your customers can find what they are looking for.

For example, is the 23.89% search exit rate good or bad for business? If bad, is its relevance that needs improvement or the page layout of the search results page? Nobody knows.

You could find out with an A/B test – but what do you test first? Usability, Relevance?

Here is my take on analyzing your customer behavior using your existing site search data:

1. Without insights, Site Search sends emails without knowing their open and click rates.

2. Every metric you measure needs insight on four levels

• Is it a Usability Problem?
• Is it a Relevance Problem?
• Is it a Data Problem?
• Is it a Merchandising Problem?

So, the bigger question is

"How do you increase the percentage of the most profitable visitors to your ecommerce site?"

Take every metric and ask the above four questions all the time. Keep these pointers in mind to identify your most valuable customers and understand how they search on your site.

What measures do you take to make searching effortless for your valuable customers? Evaluating site search on your ecommerce platform, and know you you can optimize use behavior and intent.