How Custom Product Search in Magento can Make a Difference in Overall user Experience

E-commerce is much about finding the right product within the least investment of time. All businesses related to this industry understand the need of a user friendly product search possibility/feature in the store. Almost everyone would agree that a user friendly search feature largely helps in shaping an ecommerce site to perfectly suit the needs and desire of the targeted audience.

According to Online Retail Forecast 2011 to 2016 by Forrester Research, the number of online buyers will go up to 192 million in 2016. In tandem with the growing count, their spending capability will also increase by almost 44% - and set to be $1738/buyer in 2016 in comparison to $120/user in 2011. These points refer to the fact that buyers are generating bigger pockets to spend, in what they would like to spend - thus the seller must be ready with everything that must satisfy the eager and interested buyer.

Often, the most critical part of customer retention in any ecommerce store’s user journey remains to be the ‘search’ and ‘checkout’/’purchase’ decisions. These are some crucial factors that regulate the ultimate success of an ecommerce website and not following the factors may result in the exit of the buyer from the store – largely disheartened with the available proposition of the website! Can a website bear such a risk in the competition-infested world of e-commerce?

What to do to keep Customers in?
From the buyer's point of view, having a search facility with all the filters and custom call is a must. Also the checkout stage needs to be simple and not too much lengthy. These two simple yet essential points ensure quite a drop in the store’s bounce rate. As custom Magento extension development has been quite popular among the store owners off late, most of them seeks customization in the search feature. The prime reason being various audience seek various filters and in absence of those they are not sure about how to reach the product they are looking for. To offer the finest user experience, most of the ecommerce stores use Magento as adding any custom made feature in it is easy.

The Benefits
An average user stays at any site for not more than 3 seconds, and so this is the time that he takes to decide whether he wants to buy something from this store or not. Thus, keeping the search facility flawless ensures that the customer will have no trouble in finding the required product. A flat experience often dampens the spirit of sale even if you have a huge inventory of products. On the contrary, custom product search supports the inherent joy of online shopping with precision.

The navigation becomes clear as all the categories and sub-categories are properly segregated, thus causing no confusion to the customer while making a choice.  It offers the feeling of ease to the buyer as they can choose the area of buying based on their choices through various filters. A fine search facility leads to higher number of sales as the buyer gets the desired products in less time prompting him to look for more.