Terms of Trade · Edition 3: The technology proposal
Site search
Definition
The search box on the retailer’s own website, the engine and rules behind it, and the query log it produces. Used by a minority of visitors who arrive knowing what they want and convert at a multiple of those who browse, which makes the box responsible for a share of revenue out of all proportion to its size.
Field note
Site search is the little box on your website where customers enter their hopes and dreams, like a digital letter to Santa, and answered about as often.
Board question
What were the twenty most common searches last month that returned nothing, and who in the business read the list?
Applied through
The Review walks the first search the way a customer does; Customer Truth in the Cat’s Whiskers, because the query log is the customer telling you in their own words what they came for, and almost nobody reads it.
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