All SEO signs from 2013 point toward the growing importance of user experience. Despite strong indications from Google that UX will become a more significant ranking signal moving forward, many B2C marketers are not using all of the information at their disposal to optimize their sites for visitors. The 2014 Global ecommerce Site Search Survey Results from SLI Systems found a full 57 percent of online retailers don’t use any site search information to guide their marketing programs.
Creative teams must consider the way website visitors navigate on site just as much as they focus on the places from which traffic originates. Site-search data provides deeper insights about the answers target audiences are seeking, and where there are opportunities to improve web content.
Just over 25 percent of surveyed marketers said they use site-search data to make informed decisions about SEO landing pages, which can prove extremely valuable. Suppose a marketer for a fitness brand notices that website visitors are coming to a landing page for a limited-release basketball shoe and then go on to search for similar models. It’s a signal the page might be better optimized with thumbnails of related products. That way, consumers wouldn’t have to navigate to other pages when comparing products before making a purchase decision.
57 percent of online retailers don’t use any site search information to guide their marketing programs.
Sometimes, the smallest tweaks can have a major impact on bottom-line results. Brafton recently proved this with a client that made minimal design changes to its call-to-action button graphics, but saw a huge payoff. Goal completions were 40 times higher after the client replaced muted colors with brighter CTAs.
Case in point: Marketers must be on the hunt for opportunities to improve users’ experiences even after they get visitors off the web and on their brands’ web pages. That means leaving no content analytics stone unturned to find out where traffic bounces and exists, and then seeking ways to get them to stay on sites longer.
