How one Ecommerce Search Platform is Transforming Spikes in Holiday Traffic into Profits

Online retailers spend months gettting ready for the holiday season each year. They budget for discounts, build up their stock, schedule emails and invest in paid ads. One aspect of the store that is frequently overlooked until it fails under stress is “site search”.

It's a heavy mistake. The search feature tells you what the shoppers want, using their own words. Are typically further down the buying cycle than someone simply surfing around a category page. Your ecommerce search platform matters a lot more than you think when it comes to the holidays; there are extra cars on the road and shoppers are in a hurry to find a place to shop.

The right ecommerce search platform can turn traffic surges into real revenue and here are some of the things to look out for before the holiday season.

Why Holiday Shoppers Search Differently

People do not buy in the same manner during the holidays that they do during the rest of the year. The first step to serving it well is to understand the difference.

Consumers are purchasing gifts for others. Many holiday shoppers are looking for a specific product they've already heard of rather than a query like "gifts for dad who loves cooking," "secret santa gifts under $25" or "toys for a 6 year old girl. These are not just a set of keywords, but searches based on intent and description.

Consumers are on a time schedule. People get impatient when they're waiting for shipping, when the items are on sale before midnight, and when there are long lists of gifts. They enter text at a rapid pace into cellphones, spell words wrong, and leave the store if the first page of results doesn't seem correct.

Shoppers are comparing. Holiday shoppers are likely to have multiple tabs open, across different stores. A competitor is just one tap away when search results take time to appear or are irrelevant.

There are a lot of visitors who are new to your store. Often gift shoppers go to new stores. They have no idea what your product names are, collection names are, what terms you use for your brand, etc. and therefore they use search more than brand loyal customers do.

The four patterns are difficult to solve with a simple keyword-matching search engine. A contemporary ecommerce search platform is designed to deal with them.

A holiday search platform can turn traffic into conversions in five different ways.There are five different ways in which a holiday search platform can convert traffic into conversions.

1. It comprehends why the gift is being given, not just the keywords.

A traditional search engine recognizes the phrase "cozy gift for someone who is always cold" and it will find the products that have those specific phrases. It might send back nothing, or even worse, products that it sends back that are unrelated to the gift but simply mention that word.

An AI-powered ecommerce search platform is able to understand the intent behind a shopper's search using natural language understanding. It can pair the word "always cold" with blankets, heated throws, wool socks and fleece-lined slippers without ever using the word "cold" in the description. This translates into empty, heartfelt requests over the holidays into shoppable results — the exact place buyers want the most assistance.

2. It remains fast during peak traffic.It maintains speeds during high traffic periods.

While search speed is important every day, it's paramount when traffic is growing at a rapid pace overnight. If the infrastructure wasn't built for heavy load then a search experience that feels instant in July can become painfully slow on Black Friday.

Shoppers rarely wait. They are redirected to Google or to a competitor if their autocompleteing is slow, their results are delayed or they experience timeouts. During your busiest hour, a cloud-native ecommerce search platform scales up to match your demand, while during your quietest hour, it performs as if it were during your busiest hour, too. Prior to season, check with your provider about how it deals with sudden traffic spikes, and if it's been tested for peak traffic.

3. It brings your promotions and best stock to the attention of your shoppers.

The most financially significant time for merchandising is the holiday season. Consider selling high-margin bundles, get rid of unsold stock or promote finished products in a doorbuster offer.

The good ecommerce search platform brings a high degree of control over search results to the merchandiser, bypassing the developer. Teams are able to pin promoted products, promote products with healthy stock levels and bury products that are close to running out. This is important, as no one enjoys visiting a website that isn't stocked with the products they want when they're on vacation. While keeping available and profitable products visible, Inventory-aware ranking makes sure that the customer experience is maintained.

4. It forgives typos and speaks the shopper's language

Impatient mobile users make errors. They write "airpods cse" or "blutooth speeker" or "chrismas sweater". When your search engine needs the exact spelling, the shoppers will be greeted with a zero-results page and leave.

Typo tolerance, synonym handling, and spelling correction remove these errors without being noticed by the shopper and present relevant products. Multilingual search is another added feature for stores that sell internationally, allowing customers to use their own language to search and get the correct results. These features tend not to be part of the discussion at planning meetings but they recoup sales that would otherwise be lost.

5. Transforms search data into quick decisions

It is hard to come up with a monthly report during a holiday season. All of the time there's a trend shift, it's sometimes daily, sometimes hourly, as a product gains popularity on social media or a competitor sells out.

A good ecommerce search platform also provides real-time search analytics to track what shoppers are searching for at this moment, what queries are not yielding any results and what searches are generating clicks but not conversions. This information will enable your team to respond on the same day. You can add synonyms for a popular search term, setup a landing page for a popular query about gifts, redirect searches to in-stock products, or make changes to promotions as they become popular and visible.

Find the right Keyword for Your Best Holiday Sales Channel!

This is the reason why holidays can be costly to attain. Each visitor who comes in via ads, emails and social marketing, comes at a price. Sending that traffic to a search experience that doesn't understand what it's searching for, doesn't perform well as it loads, or displays inventory items that are out of stock… is what you worked hard to spend that money on.

That is where an intelligent ecommerce search platform saves the day. It knows what gift shoppers want, processes high traffic quickly, provides merchandisers with control and formats results they want, forgives careless gifts thanks to quick traffic processing, and tracks real-time data your staff can utilize to make a difference.

Others, such as Experro, combine these features, including Gen AI-powered search and intent understanding, with typo tolerance, multilingual, and merchandising tools designed for ecommerce teams. Either option is going to be the same lesson: don't forget about site search, it's a fundamental component of your holiday strategy. People who visit your search bar are ready to purchase. It's up to you to ensure they locate what it is they are seeking.