How To Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Shopify Search Function

A site search function, ordinarily, proves to be important to your website users for just finding products fast. When it comes to eCommerce, best believe, it goes deeper than this and has a lot to do with converting visitors and increasing Shopify sales.

Econsultancy reports that the site search function proves to be twice as effective in converting website visitors as ordinarily browsed product catalogs. Using the Shopify search function on an eCommerce store equates to looking for an exact product to purchase, no matter how little this intention is. Other determinants like the ease in going through the Shopify sales funnel, price of product, availability, and delivery terms, among others, then play their part.

You have to know how much you get from your Shopify search function to understand the magnitude of improvements to be made. This article focuses on the most crucial metrics to measure using your preferred analytics tools, as well as some extra information on the best tools to use. Let’s get right in.

Metrics To Measure Your Shopify Search Function Effectiveness

No matter the tool used, certain important metrics provide you with the relevant data and information for tracking. Of course, within your preferred tool, these metrics may have different names, but an explanation of them lets you understand what each connotes nonetheless. Metrics generally help you do the following:

Monitor how often your eCommerce store visitors use the search function on your website

Understand your Shopify site search conversion rate in comparison to conversions through ordinarily browsed product catalogs

Monitor revenue generation through the site search function, as well as the average order value, so you know the quality of conversions you get through it Now, more specifically, what are the metrics you measure?

• Sessions
• Revenue
• Transactions
• Average Order Value
• Ecommerce Conversion Rate
• Per session value

A number of these include comparisons with your product catalog and here is an in-depth look into each of them.

Sessions

Sessions, as seen when using the Google Analytics tool, indicate the number of website visitors making use of the search function or ordinarily browsing through product catalogs. This metric helps you understand which area of your website attracts more visitors, how your eCommerce store traffic is split between these two different elements, and even whether your Shopify search function is appropriately accessible to website visitors.

Remember your search function remains more effective for conversions than your product catalog. Getting a hold of this number helps you understand whether there is a problem with the search function and also the average number of search bar users you have to work with. You know the effectiveness of your Shopify search function in gathering traffic.

Revenue

Revenue refers to the total value of Shopify sales you make through both your search function and product catalog. Information on how much you generate from each of these website elements lets you understand their profitability and which of them generates more.

eCommerce conversion experts suggest your search function is expected to generate more revenue for you. This is because of what was said earlier – visitors making use of the search bar within an eCommerce store have more defined intentions to make purchases. You know your site search function’s effectiveness in generating revenue.

The revenue metrics also serve an important part role in the measurement of other metrics.

Transactions

The “transactions” metric relates to the number of purchases made by your eCommerce store visitors through both the search function and product catalog. With an advanced analytics tool, you additionally know when and where your website visitors joined and exited your conversion funnel. This means the part of the conversion funnel you lose customers the most as well as the part where you gain customers. These are presented by different segments for both the site search function and product catalog.

Knowledge of the number of transactions made through these two website elements helps you measure how many attempted purchases you have. It also remains an important metric for determining other additional metrics subsequently mentioned within the post.

Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Now, this is one metric that takes numbers from your “sessions” metric and “transactions” metric into consideration. It is a representation of or comparison between the amounts of traffic your site search and product catalog generate, and how much of this traffic is successfully converted to Shopify sales.

Here, the actual effectiveness of your site search function is easily measured. A high eCommerce conversion rate through your Shopify search function means high effectiveness of the conversion funnel relating to it, as simple as that. However, other metrics remain important to individually measure whether you are getting enough traffic and how much traffic you lose. Of course, there is a formula for it; (Number of Search Function Sessions/number of completed transactions) x 100, with this represented in percentage.

Average Order Value

Your average order value is another metric that considers other individual metrics. In this case, these are numbers from your “revenue” metrics and numbers from your “transactions” metrics that lead to Shopify Sales. The average order value represents the quality of conversions through your Shopify search function and product catalog. Generally, conversions through the search function are expected to have a higher value than conversions through ordinary product catalogs.

With the average order value metric, you understand the type of customers making use of the search function and how much important they are to your revenue generation. Just like the eCommerce conversion rate, there is also a formula for calculating it:

An increase in this metric also represents an increase in your site search function’s effectiveness.

Per session value

Your “per session value” metric is a version of the “average order value” metric that goes even deeper. It takes into consideration of your total traffic (sessions) and the revenue generated from Shopify Sales. This metric helps you to understand how much value each website traffic presents to your eCommerce business, with this split between your site search function and product catalog. The formula to calculate this is; (Revenue/Total Sessions). Just like the conversation rate and average order value, you want this to increase when you make improvements.

From all these, the product catalog is included in comparisons so you have enough context to deal with. You measure the exact value of what your site search function contributes to the overall effectiveness of your eCommerce website optimizations.

Tools For Measuring And Optimizing Shopify Site Search Function Effectiveness

Perhaps Google Analytics becomes your go-to tool in measuring these important metrics. Why not? It has dedicated analytic considerations for each of these metrics. However, for your optimizations and analytic solutions dedicated to Shopify itself, you want an even more specific tool. What becomes your go-to tool then?

This is where Sparq comes in.

With Sparq you don’t just get easy analytic options automatically integrated with your Shopify search function but your use of Google Analytics is not hindered. What’s more is that you also have dedicated options allowing you to make necessary optimizations and improvements without needing other tools, unlike Google Analytics. Integrate Sparq with your Shopify store and equip yourself with all you need to measure and improve your overall search function effectiveness.

Experience the demo today.