5 Tips for Building a More Relevant Site Search Experience

3. Show related searches. It's smart to show related searches on search pages by configuring your site search to populate search results pages with four or five related keyword phrases below the main body copy or product description. Your site search should be able to gather these keywords or phrases from past search terms that other visitors have used when searching for these items — i.e., the most popular search terms that have been used to find the items in question. This is an effective way to promote related content or products, and may also provide some search engine optimization benefit.

4. Make marketing mobile friendly. A lot of web activity has shifted to mobile devices, including tasks like reading emails and browsing retail storefronts. Adjust your marketing activities to take mobile shoppers into account. For example, make sure marketing emails are easily readable on mobile screens and create mobile-optimized landing pages that show off products to best take advantage of when users arrive at them from a search.

5. Pay attention to performance of top products. How well do you know if the products you're listing at the top of search results are actually delivering conversions and revenue? Dig into your search reports to see how many customers are clicking on the top five search results and converting. That data can tell you if customers are responding positively to the results at the top of the list.

Tim Callan is the chief marketing officer at SLI Systems, a provider of full-service site search, navigation, merchandising and user-generated SEO solutions.