Imagine visiting a website that sells lingerie.

Now imagine entering the words “sleep” and “wear” into the site’s search engine only to receive the message, “No Matches Found.”

That’s a frustrating experience for the consumer, but it’s an equally trying moment for the retailer, whose technology can’t always guess what a consumer really means when she uses two words rather than one, misspells an item or tries to search using variables that aren’t available.

Such was the plight of La Senza, a Canadian seller of lingerie and sleepwear (and yes, that’s a one-word term). The Montreal-based company, operator of La Senza.com and La SenzaSpirit.com, would receive “quite a few e-mails from customers saying they couldn’t find things, and asking us to look for them,” says vice president of e-commerce Monica Salinas.

“When people buy online, they want to find what they’re looking for,” she says. “It’s not like browsing in the store, and this is especially so when it comes to lingerie. You already know your size. You’re not going just to look; it’s more of a necessity. And we have loyal customers. A lot of them have been in our stores; they know the name of the product they buy and they know the size. I was just not satisfied with the way [the company’s website search] worked.”

Search and marketing functions
Salinas approached Nextopia Software last year, looking for a way to add depth and functionality to the current search engines. She was so impressed with the company’s offerings that La Senza had Nextopia eComm|Search up and running on its primary site inside of two weeks.

In addition to improving search functionality, La Senza has gained the ability to enhance marketing efforts by adding a banner when a customer looks for a certain item or pushing certain items or brands by placing them higher up on the results page.

“This is actually a very niche and upcoming area,” says Nextopia president Sanjay Arora. “A lot of retailers don’t even realize that their search isn’t working. There are more important things than a site search when starting a business website -- things like driving traffic to the site and CPC [cost-per-click] -- so search is typically what’s left behind. But I think we’re about to see huge growth in what’s happening in that search box.”

Nextopia’s platform includes features such as the ability to correct spelling mistakes, puzzle out synonyms, deal with singulars and plurals and complete partial terms. There’s even a “Did you mean…” response to help guide consumers where they want to go. Apparently, it’s working; in addition to La Senza, clients include the likes of TigerGPS, Abt Electronics, Crabtree & Evelyn, Rock Bottom Golf and Vintage Tub & Bath.

At La Senza, Salinas is still finding ways to push the boundaries of the search functionality. For Valentine’s Day, for example, the company matched certain items with Valentine’s Day searches and created special related banners; it also used a compilation of the most popular search terms to promote its ideas about what people want for the romantic holiday.

“It’s really a perfect marketing tool,” she says, “and we have seen results. We’ve seen some sales going up, even when we weren’t running a big campaign.”

In addition to being able to see what customers are searching for and finding, the tool allows La Senza to see what else those customers are looking for that the store doesn’t carry. That can help in decisions about brands and styles being offered. Analytics include reports on most popular search terms, poorly performing searches and highest converting keywords.

“We’ve definitely learned some things about keywords,” Salinas says. “That’s the main thing.”
 

            
Final frontier
From Arora’s perspective, the search box is the “final frontier of the site in terms of increasing sales and building awareness.” By using search to push certain brands or items, the retailer has an opportunity to present products based on inventory, as well as bolster manufacturer relationships.

A Nextopia client that sells kitchenware, for example, “found that 30 percent of the searches on its site were about a certain brand,” he says. “So they developed a relationship with that brand and began capturing all of those lost sales. And then there’s our metrics-driven approach to relevancy. It basically looks at freshness, inventory, profitability and whether the item is a trendy hot seller. Some of this is simply automatic, but some of it is not.”

Arora foresees search becoming even more personalized, keeping track of what an individual consumer is looking for one day and then making targeted suggestions based on that information the next day. “That may sound a little creepy, but it’s already happening,” he says.

Regardless, companies that don’t already take search functionality seriously need to reconsider, he says. “This is not just about giving customers a refinable search. It’s about giving retailers control over the returns.”