Survey: Retailers fail to meet online customer search expectations

There is a jarring disconnect in what consumers expect from online search and what e-commerce retailers are delivering.

According to a new survey of 2,000 North American and U.K. consumers and 308 senior e-commerce executives from customer experience platform Nosto, online retailers often come up in short in their search experience. The study also includes real-world testing data of the on-site search experience served by 100 leading e-commerce brands across the fashion, beauty, and home/garden/DIY categories.

Survey results indicate 69% of consumer respondents go right to an e-commerce site’s search bar when they enter a site, but 80% admit leaving because the on-site search experience didn’t meet their expectations. And although 99% of retail respondents believe their search results are relevant, 69% of consumer respondents say that they often see irrelevant results.

This finding is supported by real-world site testing revealing that 81% of e-commerce websites display irrelevant items when shoppers search two-word queries.

Similarly, even though 70% of consumer respondents say they are likely to make a purchase if results are personalized, 66% of e-commerce respondents say they fail to offer personalized search results, despite 82% of them agreeing that personalized search is critical for higher conversions.

Personalization is even more important to younger shoppers, as 24% of surveyed 16-24-year-olds and 29% of 25-34-year-olds said they are likely to leave a site if on-site search is not personalized.

And six in 10 e-commerce respondents admit their on-site search doesn’t display content (such as articles or FAQs) that relate to the products customers are searching for, even though virtually the same percentage (59%) of consumers say they are likely to make purchases after consuming this kind of content.

In addition, the survey suggests that e-commerce retailers are not doing enough to make the on-site search experience easy and frictionless for their shoppers. Close to three in 10 (27%) consumer respondents have left a site because the results showed too many options and it wasn’t possible to narrow down the search using appropriate filters.

Meanwhile, 26% of consumer respondents have left because search results listed out-of-stock products, and 25% have left because results were too slow to load. More than half (56%) agree that e-commerce site-search should be quicker.

Not being able to narrow down search results with appropriate filters (e.g. the cut of jeans or the finish of lipstick) is one of the top three on-site search frustrations of 30% of consumer respondents. But 56% of e-commerce respondents say they don’t provide this kind of dynamic filtering facility that is specific to the products being searched for.  

E-commerce retailers feel the pain

Finally, the survey reveals that almost all e-commerce respondents are experiencing online search pain points, with 95% experiencing at least one pain point with their current search solution. The top pain point (mentioned by 29%) was a lack of advanced product data processing, meaning they are unable to serve complex queries and provide relevant results matching.

Other notable pain points include “too much time making improvements” (26%) and “too many manual configurations needed to get relevant results” (25%).

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