5 Ways to Use Your Website Search Function to Guide Your Marketing

By Daniel Petersen

Imagine this scenario: A customer types the name of a shirt they want to buy into your website’s search—only to be routed to the wrong item because they misspelled it.

It happens on websites all the time. The website user types in a synonym your search doesn’t recognize, or they search for information buried too deep on your website. Their search sends them to a web page that no longer exists. The result is a frustrated website visitor with two courses of action: they will either contact your company by phone, chat, or email, or they will end up going to a competitor’s site.

Best-case scenario: your company is now spending internal resources to help the customer find what they’re looking for. Worst-case scenario: you lose the sale and a loyal customer.

The website search field is an often overlooked feature on a company’s website, and companies will usually only seek search solutions when they realize there is a problem. Smart marketers, however, should be looking at their search function as a marketing tool much sooner.

Search can play an important role in a company’s marketing strategy. The search field is the only place where your website visitors can directly tell you what they want in their own words. If you're able to understand and analyze your website’s search results, you can use your website’s search function data and insights to improve other areas of your business—beyond your website.

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Utilizing your website's search function as part of a marketing strategy

Most companies don't think about the role a website’s search function can have in their organization's overall marketing strategy because they are only focused on driving traffic to their website and hoping that visitors will find what they’re looking for once they get there.

They make assumptions about a user’s journey through their website and don't see search as a place where they can gather data to analyze. They also don't realize that the search function can be used to guide potential customers to where the company wants them to go on the website.

Here are five ways to think differently about your website's search function and how to include search in your marketing and sales efforts:

1. Take action in response to users' queries

For example, if users are searching for a product on your website using an acronym that you aren't aware of, you may want to incorporate that acronym into your business. Or if you find that a lot of people are searching for a product that you don’t have, you may want to consider selling that item.

2. Develop new content that users are searching for

A recent case study examined the impact of search on Covid-19 content online. When the pandemic began, people used website search functions to look for relevant coronavirus information, but were unsuccessful because the content didn’t yet exist on websites. Search data brought this lack of information to the forefront and inspired companies and government entities to prioritize the Covid-19 content they were posting online. More importantly, this study showed the importance of search engines in times of crisis.

Search analytics, however, don’t only have to come into play when there's an emergency. You can use analytics to determine if users are searching for information specific to a certain event or time of year and adapt your website to close the gap between search terms and specific content that users are seeking.

3. Leverage your website's page rankings to bump certain web pages higher in the search results

You can rank a list of web pages and assign them to appear as the results when specific words or phrases are used to search. Also, based on visitor patterns, links that are clicked more often can be set to appear higher in the results.

4. Utilize call-to-action banners

A banner can appear above the search results a contain a call-to-action that's related to the search terms. Banners can be helpful for directing website visitors to popular seasonal content, for example, and reduce the time it might take users to go through the search results.

5. Have quick links to frequently searched-for web pages

Quick links skip the search results page entirely and direct users to specific web pages if their search contains specific words or phrases. Besides being a great time-saver for users, this allows companies to guide a user's journey on the website and direct traffic to web pages that are the most relevant for a search term.

RELATED: Why Your Branded Search Results Are Your Most Important Digital Asset