The latest study released by DoubleClick further underlines the importance of on-site search and the impact it has on enabling shoppers to find and purchase products on a site. The study shows that 9.3% of all sales came through the search function on shopping sites in Q3 2004 compared to 6.6% a year earlier. Is there a correlation between shoppers spending less time on the site and better on-site search and content?

We talked to Richard Fleck, director Of Strategic Services for DoubleClick, who said, “There definitely is a correlation. The more product specific focus the better, because a site’s visitors are using that on-site search engine to look up a specific sweater or type in a sku and that search needs to produce a relevant result and more importantly a purchasable result. On-site search is becoming a standardized shopping tool that consumers expect.”

Fleck lists three things most important in regard to using on-site search:

1)     It must produce a relevant result

2)     The content has to be compelling enough to push the user to take the next buying step

3)     Up-sell and cross-selling opportunities are even more important because that user already has just one product in mind. So the up-sell must be utilized and must be extremely relevant to that purchaser. 

DoubleClick’s findings also underline the continuing need for optimizing search results to fit your merchandising strategy, says Fleck.

DoubleClick’s study found that merchants are becoming more successful in guiding prospects through the checkout process. The report also shows that while consumers are visiting more pages per visit on a Web site year over year, they are spending less time on a site. DoubleClick noted that this figure suggests that while consumers are more active in the shopping process, a marketer has less time to capture their attention per page, because they’re spending 10% less time on e-commerce sites per session.

“Benchmark site analytics such as these can be used by marketers to improve their overall conversion rates,” said Eric Kirby, vice president of Strategic Services, DoubleClick. “While we see very positive trends in the marketplace in terms of rising conversion rates and higher value orders, it’s clear that there is room for further improvement by analyzing where and why more than half of all potential customers abandon their carted products before checkout.”

DoubleClick’s study was based on aggregate data from DoubleClick's SiteAdvance Web analytics solution used by multi-channel marketers.