Ecommerce Site Search Solutions: How To Transform Text-Based Search

Text-based search has served an extraordinary purpose. It was the first search functionality made available in the early days of the internet, and it’s quite literally what the web is built on. It’s also a fairly straightforward way to navigate the space, however, technology improves year-over-year. And alongside that evolution in tech, consumers’ needs are undergoing a major priority shift, too. Businesses can benefit from new-age ecommerce site search solutions.

Don’t get us wrong: Text-based search is still majorly important; it’s not being replaced. But it does need to be augmented with additional search functionalities and support that address these very pertinent consumer demands. The answer? Multi-Search.

Here are 4 major consumer needs along with an aspect of multi-search that addresses that need, and how.

1. Consumers want to “shop the way they think”

Humans are creative creatures; we don’t think exclusively in a script. Our imaginations conjure up all sorts of imagery that, until recently, was large of no use when shopping online. A lot of the time, retailers and consumers alike would have to rely on someone’s ability to describe, in words, the exact product they were after.

With things like visual search and voice functionality, we inch ever closer to a search experience that allows consumers to “shop the way they think,” and it helps retailers make their products more discoverable, too.

2. Consumers want to develop their style and taste

Consumers look for — and find — inspiration in a lot of places. But when retailers realize the power of visual search and what it can do to facilitate consumer creativity, they can position themselves to benefit from it.

In fact, more than half of consumers (55%) say that visual search is instrumental in developing their style and taste. Integrating visual search capabilities as a function on your website is a win-win for everybody.

3. Consumers want to find the right product quickly

The quicker that retailers can show the right product to the right customer, the more likely they are to make that sale.

Things like voice search not only help consumers initiate a search as soon as they think of it, thanks to voice activation tech found in a myriad of home hub-type products, but it also allows them to describe a product just as they imagine it without having to write it out.

4. Fashion shoppers want to get their hands on the latest trendy items

It’s no surprise that trends can be fleeting. That means that there’s a particularly small window of time that retailers have to show their products to consumers before it’s on to the next.

Augmenting the entirety of the search experience widens the breadth of the possibility of shoppers finding and purchasing your products. And if they already know exactly what they’re looking for (and they often do), providing them with as many options as possible via a multi-search approach can help them find it.

ViSenze eCommerce Site Search Solutions

ViSenze is the leading global retail AI platform provider for retailers, brands, and merchants. We offer AI-powered ecommerce site search solutions that power product discovery journeys and deliver optimized shopping experiences. At ViSenze, we understand that AI is quickly reshaping ecommerce, and we believe that it should also be the core technology driving a brand’s personalization efforts.

Interested in AI-powered search solutions? Request a demo today.