During Black Friday, consumers spend more time on online stores than usual, intent on finding the best deals and products. Many merchants leverage this hold they have on their shoppers’ attention and get them to buy more, increasing the average order value during BFCM on their Shopify store.While marketing and excellent customer support is a crucial part of increasing average order during BFCM, one underrated way to sell more is by improving your Shopify store’s search experience. Not sure how your store’s search features can increase Shopify sales during Black Friday? We’ll explain.
Why Do You Need a Better Search Experience During BFCM?
Many blogs and resources about Black Friday would give you multiple marketing tactics and strategies to help you boost your average order value. We agree— your marketing is a crucial part of increasing sales during this holiday season. But, your search experience also plays a pivotal role in how easily BFCM shoppers can find and purchase products they want.Let’s say you’ve promoted your best collections and written compelling email campaigns. After reading your email, your customer may end up on your Shopify store, eager to browse through your deals and find products they want to buy. But, a poor search experience can hinder this sale, making them frustrated and causing them to abandon your Shopify store altogether.Let’s be honest— you can’t afford to miss out on this sales opportunity.By setting up the right tactics, you can improve your search experience and help your Black Friday shoppers find what they are looking for quickly. Your strategy should also be able to convert shoppers even if they end up on an empty search page (like through recommendations). This frictionless search experience is what would make shoppers return to your Shopify store, even after the BFCM sale.
Also read: Complete guide to using Shopify search & filters to improve online shopping experience
To get started, here’s what you need to do to improve your search experience in general, even when you aren’t promoting the biggest sale of the year:
- Search filters: Simplify how people narrow down their search and help them find what they want exactly by letting them add filters to their search results like price range, size, etc.
- Autosuggest: Predict and suggest keywords to shoppers while they are typing.
- Search bar recommendations: Display product recommendations directly in the search bar and help shoppers find products they want more quickly.
- Recommendations on an empty search results page: Show product recommendations personalized to the shopper if they end up on an empty search results page. This can help you lower drop-offs.
You can enable these search features on your Shopify store using the Searchly app. The Shopify search app helps you provide a positive search experience with search filters, autosuggest, recommendations, and even keyword synonyms, while also ensuring that they match the look and feel of your Shopify store.Install Searchly to enrich your search experience now!But, what can you do to improve your search experience during BFCM specifically, when shoppers are in a hurry to find products and checkout? How can you set up a search experience that increases the AOV on your Shopify store? We have 8 search tactics you can use to increase the AOV on your Shopify store during BFCM.
8 Ways to Increase Average Order Value During BFCM With Search And Filters
1. Enable a discount-based filter
Some merchants run multiple discount percentages at once during their Black Friday sale, depending on the products they offer. With this strategy, certain products may have prices slashed by 20% while others may be discounted by 40% or more. If you’ve set up these different discount ranges on your Shopify store, you need to simplify how shoppers find products with specific discounts. Some shoppers may want to save big and would prefer to see products that only have 40% or 50% off. By pleasing these discount hunters, you’ll see better conversions during your big sale. Allow shoppers to narrow down their search by letting them filter your product catalog by discount percentages. For instance, shoppers can search for T-shirts that are discounted by 30%, allowing them to find the items they want at the discounts they prefer. Such a search filter is sure to make discount hunters more receptive to your Shopify storeHere’s how Amazon has set up a discount-based search filter for their products:
You can set up this discount-based search filter by enabling the “Filter by sale percentage” through Searchly. Searchly’s search filters feature allows you to provide a wide range of options on your search page, letting shoppers narrow down their search and letting them find the item they want to buy in minutes. Also read: How to Use Product Search Filters on Your Shopify Store to Provide A Personalized Shopping Experience
2. Enable autosuggest
Amazon knows how to predict customer needs and meet their needs before customers even anticipated them. Due to this, Amazon is a top choice for shoppers, for everything from books to clothes to kitchen accessories. How can you model Amazon’s customer-first approach with your search experience?It’s a simple yet powerful tactic— autosuggest. Autosuggest allows you your store's search engine to predict what your shopper is looking for and show relevant suggestions accordingly. So, if a shopper started to type "t-shirt", they will instantly be shown the keyword without them having to type the whole word out. Moreover, the keyword suggestions will allow your shoppers to narrow down their search, showing phrases like "red t-shirt for men", etc.Autosuggest seems like a complex feature to set up. However, with the right Shopify search app, setting up autosuggest is as easy as clicking a button. You can set up the autosuggest through your Searchly app. The app’s learning algorithm understands the pattern of keywords used on your Shopify store and starts showing relevant suggestions accordingly.
Provide a positive search experience during BFCM and increase sales using Searchly.
3. Suggest products within the search bar
Another way to improve conversions through your search is by showing product recommendations within the search bar. Many merchants display recommendations across their store— from their home page to their product page to even their cart page. However, the search bar is an untapped opportunity for merchants.Let’s take an example. A shopper starts typing in keywords within the search bar. If they are shown relevant products within the search bar, they wouldn’t have to browse your entire product catalog. Instead, they can just click on the recommendations through this search bar and get to the product they want to buy. Recommendations within the search bar can help you provide shoppers with the exact products they want without making them spend time looking for it. You can set up personalized product recommendations on your search bar using Searchly. The Shopify app automatically shows relevant product suggestions based on the keyword that the shopper has used.
4. Cross-sell with “Frequently Bought Together” widget
Increasing your average order value is all about showing the right product recommendations at the right time. One recommendation tactic that is commonly used by merchants to sell more is the “Frequently Bought Together” product widget. This recommendation widget cross-sells items that the shopper would be interested in buying along with the product they already expressed interest in.So, if a shopper is looking at a pair of shoes, you could recommend them a pair of socks as well, nudging them to buy both items and successfully increasing cart value. You can set up this product recommendation using Searchly. The Shopify search app lets you place recommendations across your Shopify store. We suggest placing the “Frequently Bought Together” widget is on the product page and the cart page. Since shoppers have already expressed interest in a product while browsing its product page or after adding it to cart, the well-placed recommendation can help you sell more items.
5. Analyze common keywords and search phrases and set up synonyms accordingly
Shoppers often search for products on your Shopify store using uncommon keywords that you don’t usually use for your product descriptions. Due to this, these items may not even show up as search results even if you may have the exact product they are looking for. This misunderstanding can cause you to lose shoppers entirely. You can mitigate this negative search experience by adding synonyms to your common keywords. This process lets you define other keywords that your shoppers would be using to search for products on your Shopify store and linking them to your more common keywords. For instance, with synonyms defined, if a shopper searches for “sleeveless T-shirts”, they will be shown results for “tank-tops” as well.To prepare for Black Friday, you can go through your ‘top online store searches with no results’ report on your Shopify dashboard and identify all the keywords that didn’t return any results. You can then add the relevant ones to your synonyms and link them to your common keywords. This way, your BFCM shoppers will be less likely to see empty search results.
Enabling synonyms for your common keywords can be done on the Searchly app. The Shopify app lets you list as many synonyms for a specific search term. Searchly then automatically shows the relevant search results to your shoppers, even when they use less common terms.
6. Show recommendations on empty search pages
Even with synonyms enabled, you may find some store visitors searching for products that you don’t sell. For instance, if you are a store that sells dresses, some visitors may search for a specific product you don’t offer like “leather jacket”. In such cases, your search is sure to bring back an empty results page but, you still have the chance to engage these shoppers with the other products you sell.Display product recommendations on pages that return empty search results to your shoppers. Many merchants show ‘Bestsellers’ or even the shopper’s ‘Browsing History’ to ensure that shoppers don’t drop off after seeing an empty page.You can enable and customize the recommendations you show on search results pages that bring back zero results. The Searchly app lets you choose the message you want to show on your empty search results page and even allows you to customize the types of recommendations you show.Nike shows its popular products as recommendations if it’s search engine doesn’t find any matches to the keyword used.
7. Show content and blogs on pages with empty results
Oftentimes, shoppers land on an empty search results page and end up losing interest and abandoning the store altogether. Even with recommendations placed on this page, shoppers may not be intrigued enough about these products to keep them on-site. You need to ensure that an empty search results page doesn’t make shoppers lose interest in you. Many merchants provide an interactive experience within their search results page, displaying blogs, quizzes, and guides to re-engage shoppers instantly, despite the disappointing search results.If you have a product quiz, this interactive content piece is sure to capture your shopper’s attention. Or, you could look through the guides and blogs you’ve written to identify the ones that have high readership and place them on your search results page.
8. Display reviews on products to increase your credibility
If you’ve just landed on a new Shopify store, you may be hesitant to buy from them. When encountering a new store, most online shoppers only purchase one time. Their mindset is that they could test out the product to see its quality before buying more from the new store. So, convincing your new customers to buy more items during your Black Friday sale may be tricky. That is, unless you can show how credible you are as a brand.Reviews from past customers can help you make the case for your brand and your products during Black Friday. To increase your brand trust using reviews, you can install a Shopify review app like Ali Reviews and Judge.me. Using these apps, you can collect reviews from past customers and display them on your product pages. You can even convince your shoppers to upload pictures of them wearing the product.What’s more, you can show these product ratings within your search results so that shoppers can see how highly-rated your products are. Searchly integrates with top review apps like Judge.me and Ali Reviews to allow merchants to show their product ratings within their search page.By showing your credibility through reviews, new shoppers who are browsing your Shopify store during BFCM will feel confident enough to buy more items. An assured way to increase average order value during BFCM!
Increase your average order value during BFCM with Searchly!
We hope these tactics help you understand how a great search experience can have a positive impact on your Shopify store’s sales. By optimizing your search and planning for common problems that shoppers usually face while searching on your Shopify store, you can increase the average order value during BFCM on your Shopify store and provide a delightful shopping experience to your customers.Improving your search experience is easy with an app like Searchly. This Shopify search app helps you cut short the time that shoppers take to find specific items on your Shopify store. It lets you enable instant search, autosuggest, search filters, and even search bar and search page recommendations. With increasing search behavior among online shoppers, such an app is crucial to help you improve your shopping experience and ensure you don’t lose customers, especially during the holiday season.
