Loyal customers keep ecommerce businesses thriving. They return to the brand’s websites for repeated purchases and recommend it to their friends.

Sounds great, right?

Once you acquire a base of loyal customers, they provide the highest profit for the lowest spend.

One of the strategies to have more loyal customers is through an ecommerce site search. Here’s how an effective ecommerce site search impacts customer loyalty and retention.

Why should you focus on improving customer loyalty?

Loyal customers visit your website more often. If you keep satisfying their needs, you do not need to spend big marketing budgets to attract them - they remember your brand’s name and shop on your website.

Here’s why you should put all efforts into acquiring loyal customers:

• The returned purchases increase your ROI. Loyal shoppers usually pay more for the products.

• They save you marketing costs. You do not need to spend large advertising budgets on attracting them to your e-shop since they are already familiar with it.

• You receive more positive reviews. Loyal customers willingly share positive experiences with your brand. Therefore, you might receive more positive reviews or some fruitful user-generated content.

• This helps you gain a competitive advantage. Even if a cheaper product appears in the market, loyal customers are more likely to buy from the brand they trust.

TLDR: it’s just worth it. And feels good.

Here’s how empowering an effective site search can help you improve customer loyalty and retention.

How does ecommerce site search impacts customer loyalty and retention?

It improves user experience.

Modern shoppers expect to find the products they want fast. Therefore, improving the site user experience highly correlates with increased revenue.

For instance, Cdiscount (a huge French ecommerce player) noticed a 50% increase in sales when they improved site search UX on mobile devices.

This is because an intuitive site search is easy to use and find the products - precisely what users expect.

It personalizes the shopping experience.

Every second shopper prefers shopping on websites that personalize their experience.

That’s why a personalized ecommerce site search can drastically boost business conversion rates. 48% of user spend more on websites that custom tailors experience.

You can achieve this by continuously analyzing the search data and customizing search results accordingly to each shopper. Your site search has to evaluate previous search history and accurately predict what the user might be interested in the most.

It accurately understands the user search intent.

Such AI-driven solutions widely used in ecommerce site search like NLP get to the core of the shoppers’ search intent despite typos or language a user uses.

This way, the site search engine can recommend certain products, arrange them in the order that is most likely to convert, or automatically suggest search phrases.

Autocomplete alone can boost sales by up to 24%, making you earn more from the same searches.

All these practices significantly reduce the time it takes for users to find the needed products and purchase them. This drastically improves retention and boosts trust and loyalty.

What should look for in an ecommerce site search?

If you want a highly-converting site search that satisfies shoppers’ needs, you should consider the tool that provides the following features.

• Instant search. The sooner the searcher can get the satisfying search result, the more likely he will complete the purchase.

• Autocomplete and typo correction. These features can speed up the search process and reduce the chance of misspellings or typos. The more seamless the search experience, the happier the customer.

• Personalization. Invest in a site search tool that personalizes search results based on the customer’s search history and browsing behavior. Personalized content increases relevance.

• Analytics. A successful ecommerce business analyzes search data, identifies search trends, and applies data-driven updates to improve the search experience.

If you want to make the most out of a converting site search and build customer loyalty, pick LupaSearch.

This ecommerce search tool ticks all the boxes needed for building a loyal customer base that frequently shops at your website and recommends your products to others.

This might be an excellent investment with a high return.