Do you think your sales could be improved with a better search feature? Discuss here.

"Search quality is a big factor in changing visitors to buyers online, and in making customers happy too," Google says. "Visitors spend an average of just eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website, so having a good search tool is important for turning visitors into buyers. Google Commerce Search is hosted by and uses Google search technology to make online retail searching both fast and customizable — visitors to your online store can sort by category, price, brand or any other attribute."

"E-store administrators can highlight special products or connect related ones so searching is easier for their customers," the company continues. "Google Commerce Search includes a built-in spellchecker and synonyms so if visitors can’t remember exactly how to spell the particular toy or perfume or anything else they’re hunting for, Google Commerce Search will make some suggestions. Choosing the right one is up to them, though."

This clip will give you a good idea of how it works:

Customization Features

When a user searches for a product, results can be returned in a user-friendly e-commerce-style product page, where they can simply click the item they want and add it to their cart. The site owner has control over how it looks. You can filter results through parameters like category, brand, or price, and you can sort search results by any attribute.

Results can be viewed in either a list view, which is more like a classic search results page, or grid view, which is more like the product page-style. You can control which product categories are promoted at the top or sent to the bottom of results.

Promoting Specific Items

The product also comes with a promotions feature, which lets you easily promote certain items, and cross-sell related products if you choose. It also comes with automatic spellcheck, stemming, and synonyms, so that if a user doesn’t get their query exactly right, it will help guide them to what they’re looking for. I probably don’t have to tell you that any minutia that you can control in guiding customers through the checkout process can be huge for improving sales and decreasing bounce rate. Speaking of that, you can link Google Commerce Search to Google Analytics, making it easy to track various metrics.

Getting it and Keeping it Running

Google says the product can be deployed in days, and that because it is hosted on the Google platform, retailers can scale to meet their higher-demand periods, like holidays, without having to worry about slowdowns or traffic spikes.

"The hosted factor is a key feature in making GSC easy for administrators to use," Google says. "Because there’s no hardware (or software, servers, operating systems, cables, or any other equipment), admins can upload product information to Google Merchant Center and provide a few extra customization parameters – and Google Commerce Search utilizes that product feed to power their website store search."

The same feed you use for Google Product Search can be used for Google Commerce Search. This can cut down on time and tech costs, as the company points out.

Do you think Google Commerce Search boost your web sales? Tell us what you think.

Related Articles:

> Google Answers Bounce Rate Questions

> Is Bounce Rate a Google Ranking Factor?

> Google Talking Bounce Rate Again

Google Chief Economist Hal Varian and his team claim to have done some research into the subject and has concluded that conversion rates just don’t vary much by position.

"Since Google ranks ads by bid times ad quality, ads in higher positions tend to have higher quality and higher quality ads tend to have higher conversion rates," says Varian. "Thus you may see a correlation between auction position and conversion rates just due to this ad quality effect. However, the real question is how the conversion rate for the same ad would change if it were displayed in a different position."

Varian has an answer for that question too. "Another difficulty is that the average position number reported by Google is that it is an average over all auctions in which you participate," he adds. "If you increase your bid, it is quite possible to see your average position move lower on the page! The reason is that when you increase your bid, your ad will appear in new auctions, and it will tend to come in at the bottom of those new auctions. This effect can be large enough to push your overall average position down."

"We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that, on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad," continues Varian. "For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position, would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average. Ads above the search results have a conversion rate within ±2% of right-hand side positions."

There you have the gist of Google’s research into the matter (via Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew). More info on the possibility of higher bids leading to lower ad positions can be found here.

I wonder if Google moving the ads on search results pages closer to the organic results has done or will do anything for conversion rates. We have not seen this discussed by Google.

Point #1, Avinash states that we should disregard those users who view only a page or stays on the site for less than 10 seconds when calculating the real conversion rate opportunities. In my opinion not everybody who bounces (views 1 page or views the site for less than 10 seconds) can be discounted. These users do present a fair change of conversion. Let me show you why I think that’s the case.
Let’s take an example of a visitor who searches on a keyword on a search engine and lands on the site, three things can happen before leading to the bounce.

1. User spends 5 mins reading the page and then leaves the site. (Assume this is a content site and we are collecting email addresses) Maybe the user will come back maybe he/she won’t.

2. User is so lost when he/she land on the site that she leaves (site is so disorganized or the landing page content or value proposition does not matches with the keyword he/she searched – even though site might very well have that content or product somewhere else)

3. User lands on the site which is not worth his/her time and leaves.- Wrong Site.

In the above 3 scenarios your can only discount number 3 but not number 1 and 2, 1 and 2 provide an opportunity to convert. (Note: Scenario No 3 is also worth looking at; not from conversion point of view but why and how did users land on your site when it was a wrong site for him/her).

Number 1 shows you that user was indeed interested in the site and can possibly sign up for email newsletters had your page provided him proper links or path to conversions. Discounting this user is a big mistake, considering how deeply linked sites are these days and users have lot of information on their finger tips. Users generally won’t spend time to find a path to get converted unless you can convince them, but these user provide an opportunity. This is especially true for lead generation sites, where visitors come to read something specific and they might read only one page in their visit but are valid conversion opportunity.

Number 2 shows that your site’s landing page was not well optimized to lead user to a conversion, you can’t discount the users and ignore this fact. This will be huge opportunity lost.

Note: Time spent on the site is calculated by time lapsed between 2 page views, so when a user views only one page they are automatically excluded from this calculations (not sure if there are tools that can calculate actual time spent even when a user views one page). So don’t discount users with one page views, think about why they only viewed one page what you could have done better to convert them

Regarding customer intent (Point # 3) Avinash says that “One of the biggest mistakes business make is thinking that every visitor to the website is fair game, conversion fodder”. Again, in my view there is always an opportunity to convert visitors to customers. In brick and mortar case I have seen my dad (who owned a retail store in India) converting those people who stopped by in front of his shop for 10 seconds or less or just stopped by to say hello or talk about a product they bought earlier or even to complain about a product they bought in past. If he had taken this approach of deciding that it was not worth his time to pursue those people with no intent of buying then he would have lost a lot of revenue and long term customers. For site which sells lot of retail items this is very true. For example a user comes to the site to gain some information about a product he/she bought in past, say information on how to setup up email on the cell phone, with no intention of buying a new cell phone or an accessory, this visitor can still be converted if the value proposition is there or site does a good job of selling. You can’t discount this fact.

Another thing that should be looked at, in calculating real conversion opportunity, is the effect of cookie deletion on visitor conversion. Cookie deletion inflates the number of visitors and hence your conversion potential. For example, a user comes to the site every day views few pages at the end of the each day deletes the cookies. This user will appear as 30 unique users when you look at the whole month but as you know this is only user. So you only have one conversion opportunity when you use visitor as your denominator.

You don’t have to agree with everything I said but let me know what you think.

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Anil has over 10 years of experience in Consulting, Business Intelligence, Web Analytics, Online Advertising and Behavioral Targeting. Anil helps companies use Web channel data to improve online business results (lead generation, conversion, retention and self-help metrics). Anil has helped several fortune 500 customers effectively use web analytics and increase their ROI on the web. Anil has worked with customers such as Microsoft, SmartMoney.com, ESPN, T-Mobile, Hoovers, Realnetworks, Starbucks, and TheStreet.com

Anil holds a B. Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from India and an MBA from University of Washington, Seattle.