Companies increase investment in site search to drive sales
- Added:
- Jul 29, 2010
Companies are increasing their investment in site search because they want to improve the experience for website users and increase site usage and sales, according to research published today.
The Site Search Report found that more than half of companies (57%) are planning to increase their spending on their on-site search technology over the next year. A further 40% plan to maintain the same budget.
The research, published by Econsultancy in association with internet and enterprise search company Funnelback, is based on a survey of more than 500 companies carried out in April and May 2010.
The most widely perceived advantage of site search is a better user experience, with 83% of companies saying this is a “major benefit”.
Increased site usage and increased sales are the next biggest benefits. Two-thirds (65%) of respondents say “more site usage” is a major benefit, and 64% say additional sales is a key advantage.
The research also found that many organisations are dissatisfied with the search functionality on their websites, and the extent to which they are harnessing knowledge from their site search tools.
Just 41% of responding companies are “satisfied” their site search helps them to deliver against their business objectives. This compares to 31% of respondents who are either “quite dissatisfied” (19%) or “very dissatisfied” (12%). The remaining 27% of companies are “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied”.
Only 7% of companies say they are “efficiently learning from site search and distributing these insights across the business”. Just under half (46%) are “partially” doing this but 47% are not learning from site search at all.
Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy, said: “Most organisations are increasing their investment in site search but too many companies are missing out on some basic site search features which can significantly improve the user experience and help them meet key business objectives such as increased sales.”
Stephen Morgan, Managing Director at Funnelback UK, said: “Despite improving technology the results show that, on average, only half of all searches result in website users finding what they are looking for. This underlines the problems many companies have with their site search.”
He added: “The need for quality website search is accelerating, as internet users get used to increasingly sophisticated and relevant returns. A great search engine needs to deliver a fast, accurate result set and then expand on this to allow the user to correct, expand or refine what they’re looking for, quickly and easily.”
Other findings include:
- Just over a quarter (27%) of companies surveyed use functionality which comes integrated with other software, making this the most commonly used type of technology for site search.
- Just under a quarter (23%) use Google site search, while 15% use site search technology developed and deployed in-house. Only 16% use a specialist site-search vendor, and 10% use open source technology.
- “Higher development priorities” are the biggest obstacle to the implementation of effective site search, according to company respondents. Just over a third of client-side respondents (35%) say this is the one of the three biggest barriers.
- Some 45% of companies have site search in place that supports phrase-match queries (e.g. “hello world”), while 41% say their site search supports misspellings, synonyms and acronyms. Only 39% have technology in place which enables them to customise rankings, while 33% offer contextual navigation.
- Only one in 10 companies (10%) has an individual or team dedicated to site search. Typically, companies either have an individual or team looking after site search as part of wider responsibilities (42%) or say that no-one is responsible for this (also 42%). The remaining 5% use an agency or consultant to manage this.
- More than a third of companies (37%) use site search technology which is free, and this number increases to 56% for companies with a turnover of less than £10 million. A third of companies (33%) say the cost of site search is included within other software fees.
To view the full report, visit: http://econsultancy.com/reports/site-search-report
Sources:
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