The humble search box can have a big impact on your affiliate website. It might not always grab your attention, but it can help give your users a better experience and help them find the information they are looking for a lot faster too. It’s an integral part of a content heavy website. If you don’t have one on yours yet, here are some of the top reasons why we think you should consider adding it now.
1. Valuable data
The more you know your user, the better you are able to market to them. It’s that simple in theory, but in practice it can be tough to get your hands on that data prior to the customer hitting your site. With a search box in place, you can glean what your users are looking for and then serve it up a lot faster helping them through their search funnel to get to the right places in your site quicker.
2. Better user experience
Your user doesn’t want to go sifting through hundreds of pages to find what they’re looking for, they want it served up in seconds. Having a site search bar creates a better user experience and more professional impression as customers can find what they are looking for.
3. Lower bounce rate
If your user can’t find a way to search through your content, then they might bounce off your site and go back to the main search engine to find a site that can serve up what they need. Even if you don’t have the content they’re looking for, a search bar counts as another form of customer engagement and won’t be counted as a direct bounce.
4. Understand user intent
There are many kinds of users, from those that read the latest news to those that jump straight to a review and convert. You know the kind of users that you want and having a site search in place helps you to understand that intent and it can help you optimise your content to fulfil that intent faster.
5. Know what to add and improve your content spread
If a search term is popular on your site for a certain review or how to article and you don’t have it on the top of your news page or blog, then search bar will give your user the chance to find the article they were interested in from the main search results they were looking at previously. Without a site search, you wouldn’t know you were missing the content that your users needed to see it in order to convert.
6. Better organisation
Sites can often begin with just a few pages and then go sprawling out from there, without any real rhyme or reason. This leads to sloppy navigation and a nonsensical user journey. While you might know this has happened, fixing it can be a long and arduous task. In the meantime, a simple site search function can stop this being a problem for your user and get them right back on track following a optimised conversion funnel to sign up at any of your partner programmes.
7. Use it as a guide
A popular searches function or history within site search can act as a great guide for your user. Plucking out popular or related searches on your site can get them on the path to converting. This doesn’t have to be difficult either if you properly tag and organise your articles. If they’re the kind of searcher that loves infographics, or videos for example, then you can serve up more of these topic suggestions in the search pre populated dropdown.
8. It’s not just for commerce sites
You may have seen the search function used most on retail sites, but it can be useful across a wide range of industries. Affiliates want to cater to those that want to convert with a certain brand, just the same way that retail sites can cater to those that want to buy the latest fashion brands. Take a lesson from one of the most competitive industries in the world and get a leg up on the competition.
9. Make it easy for mobile users to search
When navigating your site on a mobile, users want the fastest and most direct route to the information they came to your site to read. Make your site easier to navigate for those on a mobile with a simple search bar helping them to get to where they want to be faster on their mobile view.
10. It’s Free!
There are loads of free widget and plug in options to implement a search box on your site. Often this can be as quick and easy as installing a simple plugin. Try it out and find out if these perks work for you, you might be surprised by the results.
