Nearly three quarters (73%) of consumers believe their online searches are misinterpreted and that filters cut out products they may have considered, according to research from the e-tailing group.
Collectible toy retailer Kidrobot, however, has quadrupled online conversions and increased orders by 13% since improving its e-Commerce search experience. Using solutions from SLI Systems, including SLI Learning Search, SLI Rich Auto Complete and SLI Site Champion, Kidrobot has been able to improve the relevancy of search results.
In addition, Kidrobot has integrated video and social content into the search experience, adding more depth and interactivity to the browsing process. As a result, 87% of consumers now find the products they’re seeking in the first five site search results.
Advertisement
Search is a fundamental part of the online shopping experience for Kidrobot customers, according to Kelsey Vendetti, e-Commerce and Digital Marketing Manager at Kidrobot. Recognized as a premier creator and dealer of limited-edition art toys, apparel and lifestyle accessories, Kidrobot offers products that retail between $5 and $25,000.
The Kidrobot e-Commerce site is used to “communicate the brand story and instigate creative conversation between artists and collectors,” said Vendetti in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “The web site’s goal is to promote new products from emerging artists and communicate the back-story behind each product creation.”
Making Online Search More Inspiring
In early 2013, Kidrobot’s e-Commerce team outlined four goals to improve its online business: Improve the site search function, integrate search with social content, maximize SEO and drive more traffic to the site.
SLI’s Rich Auto Complete helps streamline the search experience. As consumers type a product category or name into the search bar, relevant items, images and information are displayed in the results, so shoppers can easily identify their preferred product.
The Learning Search tool increases the relevancy of search results by learning and improving based on users’ site activities. As a result, Kidrobot has been able to deliver a vast array of products to customers, even if they spell a product name incorrectly.
“We sell very unique products which often have unusual product names that are hard to spell and therefore hard to search for,” Vendetti explained. “Once the SLI Learning Search tool kicked in, we’ve seen a much better response in site visitors using and finding what they are searching for.”
Incorporating Social Content
Social media images and videos are now playing a role in the Kidrobot search experience, with the SLI tools incorporating content from Instagram, Vimeo and YouTube in search results.
“Our current web site technically very limited and does not allow us to host or post video,” Vendetti said. “Therefore, implementing the video and social components from SLI gives us an outlet to not only post videos from Vimeo and YouTube, but also pull into social content from all social channels. We have a very active social community and implementing this content into our shopping experience was very important to us.”
Vendetti explained that integrating social content has helped Kidrobot “provide the story behind each product. Currently our video and social content is only incorporated through search. Long term, absolutely we plan to have social content incorporated through all aspects of the web site.”
Learning Search, Rich Auto Complete, and Site Champion were implemented consecutively, with the process taking approximately six weeks. The Kidrobot team decided to roll out the solutions simultaneously “to have a bigger impact on the Kidrobot.com web site,” Vendetti explained. “Each tool offers a different service and we were looking to quickly improve the onsite experience and SEO channel. The Site Champion and Learning Search took up to five weeks to ramp up, as these tools are constantly being optimized based on user behavior.”
