E-commerce sites 'planning to invest in search'

12:00 29th July 2010

The majority (57 per cent) of e-commerce firms are planning to invest more money in site search tools, according to a new report.

Currently, users have just a 50-50 chance of finding what they want on an e-commerce website's site search function, the report from Econsultancy and Funnelback revealed.

Firms do appreciate the need to invest further in this field in order to boost traffic to their e-commerce site, as well as increasing the chances of those visitors returning to it.

More than a third (37 per cent) of e-commerce firms use site search technology which is free, and this figure rises to 56 per cent for companies with a turnover of less than £10 million.

Over a quarter of e-commerce firms using specialist site search vendors are very satisfied with the service they receive, while 36 per cent are quite satisfied with the results.

On average, e-commerce customers had success in just 50 per cent of their site searches, according to the report.

Recently, research from SLI Systems revealed more than two-thirds (68 per cent) of e-commerce firms do not know how to effectively use data they collect from their websites.

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