Get Sticky

Search is helping corporate giants such as Dell and IBM make their sites stickier for their users. Realizing that visitors will use the same method on their site to locate products and services as they used to arrive at their site, companies are absorbing the fact that enterprise site search has a large impact on profits.

There are several components that are imperative to reach the same kind of success these companies are experiencing. Whether you have a multi-million or a multi-hundred dollar a month budget, your site can benefit from the stickiness controlled search provides.

Fresh technology is the key. Search has come a long way in the last couple years. The newest and best technology includes certain imperative features beyond the necessary spiders and algorithms.

1. Control
The best search technology addresses the fallibility of the technology itself. The world’s best algorithms (hyperlink to spiders/web article) do a fine job of organizing results mathematically. But our brains are far more complex than algorithmic search can address. The only solution to relevancy is control. The more your visitors find, the more they’ll buy, trust and visit your site.

Controllable search should offer the following:

• The ability to interact with your search function and
• The actual participation in optimizing the technology
• Seeing what users search and being able to modify results so best matches are achieved as a rule
• Flexibility to increase ROI with paid search results, partner/affiliate inclusion and if you’re hosting a Web search engine on your site, competitor exclusion.

Turn potentially bad results into good ones with enterprise search that you can control. If your search function doesn’t offer control over each and every search result or the ability to add or delete search results, then you won’t be benefiting from truly sticky search.

In a search report, "Beyond the Personalization Myth: Cost-effective Alternatives to Influence Intent," Jupiter Research found that relevant offers targeted to specific keywords can get conversation ratios of 20% or more. Adding a human touch to strictly algorithmic search results can significantly improve revenue. One merchandiser did just that and now actively maintains over 700 keyword campaigns on its site – the profits are that good.

2. Analytics
No technology can read our minds so there really is no such thing as absolutely perfect search results. But, we can get very close when we utilize the best technology to learn from visitor behavior. Search statistics are only beneficial, though, if you’re using the information for good. The goal is to regularly learn from user queries and modify the results for any keywords that could produce better results. This gives retailers a major advantage in cross-selling/up-selling too. Manual additions to results get instant inclusion in site searches. Try it and watch the profits roll in.

3. Administration
Getting a search box live on your site shouldn’t be the definitive end to your implementation efforts. It really is only the beginning. Though control and analytics may sound like a lot of work, it really shouldn’t be. The best solutions provide intuitive administrative interfaces to enable back-end tweaking of the search function. You can really get picky here if you want the ultimate in control – demand a secure, online interface that updates instantly, wherever you or your search managers may be.

The technology is out there and if you choose wisely, it’s also affordable and easy to implement. Install controllable search now, use it as specified above and by 1st quarter 2004, you’ll have yourself one sticky site.

How do you choose the right search product for your site? Visually compare in this Competitive Analysis.