Klevu report - Majority of UK e-commerce sites’ search engines don't work
78% of of e-commerce websites in the UK are unable to convert shoppers due to their inability to “understand” natural language and thus, shoppers’ intent, according to a new report from Klevu.
This found that over three quarters of the 50 retailers researched delivered zero or irrelevant results when presented with conversational queries.
Only 20% have the functionality to understand natural language and respond with products that were a precise match.
Furthermore, a quarter were unable to handle misspellings by shoppers, with 75% missing out on additional sales through relevant product recommendations on category listing pages.
Grenson Shoes received the highest rating for best product discovery experience across all benchmarking criteria.
The heritage footwear brand allows consumers to navigate easily using multiple clauses, natural language, and even spelling mistakes. It makes relevant product recommendations and allows consumers to pinpoint the exact product they are searching for quickly.
Complicated search queries are on the rise today as more consumers rely on voice search on mobile, which means that e-commerce retailers must be able to comprehend natural language and shoppers’ intent if they want to satisfy consumers.
However, most e-commerce sites are unequipped for this, resulting in customers leaving unhappy and empty handed.
“It’s clear that major retailers need to work harder to ensure that their e-commerce experience meets consumers’ expectations,” says Nilay Oza, CEO and Co-Founder at Klevu.
“As the e-commerce market in the UK continues to become more competitive and inflation causes consumers to tighten spending, the e-commerce sites that are able to quickly offer shoppers exactly what they are searching for, and merchandise that according to margin, will be the ones to continue to gain market share.”
In other findings, 46% of the retailers surveyed offered no product recommendations on their homepages.
46% did not offer recently viewed products on any page, causing retailers to miss out onopportunities to remarket to consumers who have already shown interest in a specific product. In addition, only 5% of websites showed recently viewed products on all pages.
Halfords, Made, and Paul Smith were named in the survey as the other high performing e-commerce sites.
Halfords focuses on natural language searches that allow for complex multi-clause search strings and misspellings.
The retailer, which offers many products and services related to automotive and bikes, helps consumers get to the product they want, even when they may not know how to search for it. Product recommendations on category pages help shoppers discover similar items that they may be interested in.
Made, a DTC brand, outperformed in areas that focused on product discovery and recommendation.
Its search allows consumers to shop so specifically and delivers pinpoint accurate results.
Paul Smith drives revenue growth by using natural language processing in its search functionality and navigates misspellings, helping its customer base find a faster pathway to purchase.
The brand helps customers with additional recommendations as well as recommending products that other people like them are searching for, clicking on and purchasing.
