By Sue Chapman, Demandware Merchandising Practice Leader 

Site search optimization is a critical factor in online retail success and an immediate source of competitive advantage for those merchants that do it well. Unfortunately, there is significantly more focus today on improving site navigation and not enough on site search. Addressing the problem requires that online retailers know what their customers are searching for, yet fewer than 15% of online retailers we speak with look at their search results more than once per month.

Shoppers that search know what they want - they convert at a higher rate, buy more products and spend more per order than those that navigate. Improving the online shopping experience should start at the search box because it's the quickest, most efficient way to help shoppers find what they are looking for. The only thing that stops searchers or ‘surgical shoppers' from spending money on your site is getting lost in a "No Result" experience.

As a member of Demandware's Retail Practice team, my goal is to provide actionable recommendations based on best practice analysis and industry assessment. We are in the process of building a "best practices" engine to summarize a lot of what we know and periodically publish it in the form of a whitepaper. This paper details a program and methodology called Turning "No Results" into Sales. It will show you how you can turn your current "No Result" search experience into "shopportunities" for your customers and increase sales and profits for you. It provides a methodology, best practices and tools for translating "No Result" search terms into incremental sales by:

• outlining a framework for testing the top "No Result" search terms on your shopping site using a Search Tuning Feedback Form tool;
• assisting in analyzing why "No Result" searches are returned and grouping these terms into logical buckets or types;
• providing guidelines and best practices for presenting alternatives to the shopper to keep them engaged on your site;
• reducing "No Result" searches by up to 50%;
• increasing sales and revenues for "No Result" searches through alternative product suggestions; and
• outlining a methodology for measuring your success.