Is It Time To Audit Your Onsite Search Strategy?

Onsite Search (or “Site Search”) isn’t just another e-commerce feature to tick off for the sake of basic user experience – it’s also a marketing marvel, actionable insight oasis and conversion-rate-optimization powerhouse.

If you’re not both optimizing site search for consumers, and making use of the resulting data to influence product pages, offsite SEO or an overarching marketing strategy – you’re quite simply ignoring a goldmine for which you already own the claim. Let’s change that.

The Power of (Untapped) Site Search
Why Is Onsite Search Underutilized?
Site Search Brand Innovation Has Stalled
Expedience vs. Experience
Ethical Personalization: UX vs. Privacy
Responsive Design is Not a Turnkey Solution
Fear Of Over-Optimization
Speaking Of Lists – Check Yours Twice
Caught Up In The Semantics
Key Takeaways

The Power of (Untapped) Site Search

Onsite Search is critical for digital retailing success because the data tells a compelling story you can act on. But what if, with the holidays right around the corner no less, few of your visitors are actually using it? Consider the following:

According to Salesforce, Site Search drives 20% of all orders, with higher percentages during peak shopping seasons.
Site Search traffic consistently demonstrates superior conversion rates, often performing 2-3X better than site averages.
Only 6% of visitors use Site Search.

Salesforce Onsite Site Search Statistics

By industry: Onsite search usage to share of orders

Not only are the usage rates low – they keep getting lower. But why? As Baymard Institute explains:

Many sites hide search forms behind icons on mobile, likely contributing to decreased usage.
61% of sites have a “mediocre” or “poor” search experience.
34% of site search implementations are unable to return relevant results for simple product synonyms or colors/styles.

Meaning, Site Search usage remains surprisingly low and may be further underperforming (or even declining) due to ecommerce entities with poor implementation and/or UX visibility issues.

Are you among their unfortunate ranks?

If we a) increase the Onsite Search adoption rate we can b) increase conversions c) collect invaluable user search data and then d) use those actionable metrics to optimize the site. And this is why we will now say it a second time: Onsite Search is critical for digital retailing success. Let’s make sure you’re acting accordingly.

Why Is Onsite Search Underutilized?

Let’s put all of the above another way: The disconnect is somewhere between how shoppers find your store – versus how they find the products within it.

During the holiday season of 2023 Salesforce data showed that around one-third of all shopping started as unbranded organic search. It seems unclear then why Site Searches are only around 6%. When Search as a discovery tool takes on such a prominent role in driving the shopper to a site, why don’t they exhibit a similar prominence in driving the shopper to their desired products on the site? Our opinion is less complicated than you may think.

Site Search Brand Innovation Has Stalled

Mobile commerce now dominates online retail, with 72.9% of all e-commerce sales projected to come from mobile devices by 2024. Yet many retailers still treat on-site search as an afterthought – while 69% of shoppers go straight to the search bar, only 35% rate most website searches as “excellent“. Site Search is often difficult to find and harder to use effectively.

The challenge extends beyond basic responsive design, which looks at least “OK” regardless of device. Mobile sessions show lower conversion rates at 2.3% compared to desktop’s higher performance, and 80% of shoppers exit a site due to poor search functionality. This is particularly critical during peak seasons, when more than 50% of all e-commerce purchases are made via smartphones.

That’s a lot of underutilization-related statistics to get your head around. So it makes perfect sense to share even more. We’re laying it on thick to make a critical point:

Mobile commerce is projected to reach $728.28 billion by 2025.
79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online in the last 6 months.
90% of mobile commerce time is spent in apps, generating 3x more spending than mobile websites.
69% of consumers say successful search leads to purchasing additional items.

Seriously… enough with the stats, despite being used as a well-intentioned proof of concept (shouted through a bullhorn).

It is hard to deny how these numbers underscore the (immediate) need for retailers to optimize their mobile search experience beyond basic responsive design. Especially since mobile commerce continues its explosive growth at a 25.5% annual rate. Our only hope is that you feel a little more urgency than when you first started reading.

Expedience vs. Experience

Shoppers are driven by expedience, even if some of that comes at the expense of “experience”. Amazon has leaned heavily into this behavioral constant. Nobody ever said their shopping experience is delightful. However, nobody ever argues the expediency and efficiency that Amazon introduces into its journey. The largest catalog on Earth puts Site Search front & center. For a reason:

Simple strategies yield great results. Always.

An excellent research study indicates that by merely exposing the Search box more prominently, you may see up to a 4X increase in usage. Not unlike Salesforce, the study used an anonymized aggregation of their clients’ analytics data, combined with some first-party research to arrive at this conclusion. While the research wasn’t focused on ecommerce specifically, the findings seem to hold up for any site where Search is a prominent part of the funnel.

Ethical Personalization: UX vs. Privacy

Ethical personalization balances delivering tailored experiences while respecting consumer privacy. While 65% of customers prefer businesses offering personalization, implementation must remain transparent and respectful.

This means clear search data collection practices, genuine opt-out options, and avoiding invasive over-personalization. The key lies in enhancing customer experience rather than exploiting data – creating what the Competition and Markets Authority calls “better customer outcomes” rather than pursuing conversions at any cost.

Responsive Design is Not a Turnkey Solution

One hypothesis of why this is happening is our heavy reliance on Responsive Design to account for an increase in mobile shoppers, when in fact it’s often akin to putting a screen door on a submarine.

The adoption of responsive constructs – due in large to the technology being front and center in most platform pitch decks – seems to have relegated the Search feature to be buried under a subtle magnifying glass icon.

To be fair, Google announced their mobile-first algorithm update many months in advance of its drop, leading us all to believe load speeds would be superseding the importance of every other ranking factor – functionality and user experience be damned.

In reality, increasing the prominence of the Search bar on mobile devices seems to have been exactly what the doctor ordered. Onsite Search usage generally increases by 2X when sites replace their responsive-friendly little icon with an old fashioned form field. Progress isn’t always… progress.

Fear Of Over-Optimization?

Another hypothesis as to subpar search functionality leading to low usage rates is a crisis of confidence among digital merchandising teams.

With the onslaught of new technology these teams have to wrestle with (such as the rise of agentic ai tools), perhaps there is some risk aversion associated with trying to “do too much” regarding search functionality. As a result, it gets relegated to “Let them use it if they can find it” portion of the user experience…

…when said search prominence should be at the very top of their list.

Speaking Of Lists – Check Yours Twice

What does all this have to do with the holidays? We know that seasonal shoppers are looking for value (i.e. promotions) but we also know, both from research data and personal experience, that these shoppers are intentional. They are transactional – and they are looking for expediency.

Isn’t it convenient then, that Intentionality and expediency are exactly the promises that Site Search delivers on.

Caught Up In The Semantics

Speaking of intentionality, it seems like we are also approaching the end of the keyword-era in terms of organic user queries. Transactional-phase onsite searches have always been shorter-tail. But in terms of offsite SEO, searches have gotten longer and more semantic overtime. Which will only continue as generative AI search options gain popularity. What’s the difference? Think “roller skates” vs. “where can I buy pink FILA roller skates in a size 6?”

It’s been an era marked by trying to figure out specific terms with monthly volume, their meaning to the shopper, and then trying to influence search engines to deliver a relevant set of results based on that valuable “money” query. Some of us will miss this simpler time. But we all have to be prepared for the paradigm shift already in progress.

The rapid influence of GenAI driven search in shoppers’ daily lives point to an incoming change of expectations. Shoppers want answers to longer-form questions, not results. We all grew up in an era where searching for something on the internet meant knowing what keywords to use to get the information we needed. Same applied to ecommerce search.

We created mental models of words and their relationship to the results we sought.

According to primary research by Salesforce, GenAI search tool (like Perplexity.ai and Google Gemini) adoption has increased by 3X year-over-year. And 54% of shoppers polled are interested in using a conversational interface, using natural (semantic) language to find what they want.

Key Takeaways

Simple strategies, like making the search bar more prominent, can yield significant improvements in user engagement.
Increasing search box visibility can lead to up to 4X increase in usage.
80% of shoppers who abandon purchases do so as a result of poor search functionality.
Site Search drives 20% of all orders but is only used by 6% of visitors, indicating significant untapped potential.
Mobile commerce dominates with 72.9% of e-commerce sales, yet search functionality still remains poor on mobile devices.
Of the shoppers go straight to the Onsite Search bar, only 35% rate website searches as “excellent”.
Mobile commerce growth continues at 25.5% annually, making search optimization crucial.

Again – intentionality matters. Intentional shoppers are some of the best shoppers a brand could hope for. By adopting a simple, common sense approach to serving them, every brand can have a better holiday season this year.

About Syntheum.ai

We help e-commerce retailers implement Agentic merchandising solutions that go beyond basic automation. By integrating truly intelligent systems into merchandising strategies, we help businesses unlock their full potential - delivering efficiencies that improve operations and redefine what’s possible in online sales.