Econsultancy Finds Companies Are Increasing Investment in Site Search to Drive Sales
According to new research from Econsultancy, companies worldwide are increasing their investment in site search because they want to improve the experience for website users and increase site usage and sales.
The Site Search Report found that 57 percent of companies are planning to increase their spending on their on-site search technology over the next year. Another 40 percent plan to maintain the same budget.
The research, published by Econsultancy today in association with internet and enterprise search company Funnelback, is based on a survey of more than 500 companies worldwide carried out in April and May 2010.
The most widely perceived advantage of site search is a better user experience, with 83 percent of companies saying this is a “major benefit”.
Increased site usage and increased sales are the next biggest benefits. Sixty-five percent of respondents say “more site usage” is a major benefit, and 64 percent say additional sales is a key advantage.
The research also found that many organizations 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 percent of responding companies are “satisfied” their site search helps them to deliver against their business objectives. This compares to 31 percent of respondents who are either “quite dissatisfied” (19 percent) or “very dissatisfied” (12 percent). The remaining 27 percent of companies are “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied”.
Only 7 percent of companies say they are “efficiently learning from site search and distributing these insights across the business”. Forty-six percent are “partially” doing this but 47 percent are not learning from site search at all.
Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy, said in a press release, “Most organizations 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:
The research costs $249 and can be found at Site Search Report.