Internal site search could be very insightful when you have users searching for specific content on the site.
Some people would think having a lot of internal search performed indicates that your users are engaged with your site. To me, that will depend on what they are looking for and what their intentions are.
If people are searching your site internally, following are possible example of intentions to why they would be searching:
- The site is hard to navigate
- Users are anticipating for special offers or coupons that may reside somewhere in the site
- Users want to make sure they are not missing out on content similar to the content they already read
- Users remember the content, but forgot how to navigate to that page
When analyzing the internal site search, you may want to start laying out following metrics.
- % of visitors using internal site search
- Popular keywords and terms
- % of key terms used in search
- % distribution of search result page yielding results and without results
- % exit after internal search performed
% of visitors using internal site search
Obviously, the first thing you want to know is how many people are using the internal site search. If your site is not a search engine (like Google), and more than 50% of the users are using internal site search, then that could be an issue. Why would half of your traffic searching your site internally??
Also, tracking this metrics across time can tell you the trend in internal site search usage as well.
Popular keywords and terms
Analytics software including SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, HitBox (also Google Mini) should be able to show you what terms or keywords users are entering. Based on these internally searched keywords, you'll be able to gain additional insight to what people are searching within your site.
Is it special offers? coupons? specific content?
% of key terms used in search
Once you check out the keywords people searched, you'll notice there will be a lot of terms that are similar. For example, "coupon", "coupons", "coupon for xyz", "xyz coupon", "xyz coupons", etc.
Looking at the list of terms, it'll be wise to query the word "coupon" and see what % of the overall searched terms consist of that word "coupon". If a specific term made up a huge portion of your internal site search, then that's one additional insight to just looking at a huge list of similar keywords.
% distribution of search result page yielding results and without results
There will be times when users will query a term that may be out of context from what the site provide. In that case, your search result page will have 0 result, and when that happens, users tend to leave/exit the site.
There could be few reasons why a result didn't showed up, and one of it may be due to issue with the internal search engine logic. Whatever reason it it, it is wise to set a page that would track as no result page, so that you'll be able to understand the % distribution of search results (no results vs. showed results). This should tell you if your site or search mechanism is doing a great job in providing a result to the users.
% exit after internal search performed
Are your users satisfied with the results? Looking at the % exit after internal search performed will tell you if user click-through or not, even after they invested their time to search. If this exit rate is high, then there is either a problem with your search mechanism in providing relevant result, or your site does not have the content that users are expecting to see.
Possible optimization methods for internal site search
- Provide content that matches what users are searching. Especially if your site doesn't have that content.
- To avoid users exiting when there are no search results, add recommended content to increase stickiness.
- Improve your search mechanism/logic if there is high percentage of no results after users searched.
- If the internal site search usage is too high, think about improving your site navigation or touting the content so users don't need to search.
I am sure there are many more methods and practices that analysts are recommending, but if there are strategies that worked out well for you, feel free to share it with us.
I hope you found this article useful.
Here is an useful link if you're using Google Analytics' site search feature. Google defines its metrics in a nice way, that could add a lot of value to your analysis.
How are the metrics for internal site search calculated? - in Google Analytics
Related Link: Using Site Search Features in Creative Ways
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