Searchers are Searchers are Searchers
Is your in-site search function geared up to support your search engine optimization (SEO) and your Paid Search strategies? If your site is typical of many we analyze, 40% of your SEO investment is wasted before the first visitor arrives at your site because your in-site search engine isn’t geared to meet Searcher’s needs. Visitors who arrive at your site via one of the commercial search engines are nearly twice as likely to utilize your in-site search function as those who arrive via a route other than the search engines. If your in-site search technology works no better than that deployed on the average brand site, 47% of those visitors are doomed to failure before they arrive. (In contrast, the average failure rate for all visitors to brand sites is typically 27%.) Online users who rely on the major search engines to navigate the Web exhibit a heightened preference for in-site search.
In-site search engines, however, generally fail to yield results of comparable relevance, so the Search-first visitors register their dissatisfaction with the site by moving on, presumably to the next site listed on their Google results page. You invest time and resources utilizing SEO or Paid Search to deliver visitors to your site, so ensure that you meet the navigational preferences of those folks by ramping up the performance of your in-site search technology.
Roger Beynon
Chief Strategy Officer