Product findability optimization

Product findability optimization requires, among others, initial review of practices and existing data, researching the preferences of the customers and the competition, and understanding what needs to be optimized and how.

One of the many challenges ecommerce retailers face is product findability. Finabilty measures how quickly and effectively a relevant product appears to the customers following an initial search or site navigation. Findability depends on many aspects, some technical, some organizational, but the main aim is to provide customers with the best possible shopping experience by enabling them to navigate effortlessly through the store, and quickly find what they are looking for. In order to improve the performance of the store, sellers should invest time and effort in increasing their products’ findability. 

Products with high findability enjoy increased traffic, conversion rates and sales, and also encourage customer loyalty to the store. In addition to improving performances throughout the multitude of platforms and sales channels, high findability also improves the shopping experience in the store itself. Customer information can be effectively shared through the business, and help sellers create a much more personalized shopping experience in their stores.

Product findability is driven by data collected on the customers (such as search queries, geographical location, preferences, purchase history etc.), as well as by the store’s product data. The first step in optimizing product findability is to understand how all this information is gathered, and how to use it to increase findability. 

Optimize Product Data

In the rapidly developing world of ecommerce, sellers must keep their store’s product data optimized. The basic product data of yesterday is no longer enough to compete. Sellers should look to improve product descriptions and titles, images, include keywords and key search phrases, and try to foresee the customers’ request, and meet them. For instance, a well constructed site navigation infrastructure, complete with high levels of attribute tagging, can significantly improve products’ findability and provide an excellent shopping experience.   
 

Customize Findability Per Category 

Product data optimization requires work, as not all products, and not all customers benefit from the same optimization solutions. For example, shoppers who are looking to purchase an expensive product, such as a brand name watch or a sound system, will not usually go over hundreds of results. This type of customer might benefit more from attribute navigation, by which he can select the exact features of the product. 

Attribute navigation can also be enjoyed by shoppers who are just browsing the store, without any particular product in mind. By selecting different attributes, the browsers can reduce thousands of results to only the ones most relevant to them. Other product categories might benefit from other features, such as price comparison.  

MCommerce Findability 

With more and more sales channels popping up everyday, mobile traffic, or mcommerce, is continuously increasing its market share. However, mcommerce requires some adjustments, which sellers don’t always remember to make. This causes mcommerce to have a lower conversion rate than regular PC ecommerce, which translates to plenty of loss sale opportunities.   

One of the main causes of this disparity is bad search and navigation experience on mobile devices. Optimizing the store to function well on mobile screens, given the differences in sizes and operation compared to PC screens, is critical for the shopping experience. It doesn’t matter how good the site navigation is if the customers cannot see the product on their screen. 

Mcommerce optimization includes displaying the search bar in a prominent spot on the page, using collapsible attributes side bars, rearranging the way the information is displayed in order to avoid the need to scroll left or right, etc. 

There is so much that can be done to optimize product findability. Sellers can go back to review their customer information and then use it to add features that improve the personalization of the shopping experience. However, doing it well requires a lot of resources. Product findability optimization requires, among others, initial review of practices and existing data, researching the preferences of the customers and the competition, and understanding what needs to be optimized and how. And that’s without mentioning the actual optimization process.       

This is where Lisuto comes in. Lisuto combines technology with deep ecommerce consumer product knowledge helping sellers optimize their product data and extract much more out of the online store. Using proprietary AI technology, Lisuto goes through the existing product information, tagging the data with marketplace specific navigational tags, making necessary corrections and completions, bringing the quality of the sellers' product feed up to highest standard in terms of uniformity and completeness, making it perfectly optimized for each channel and for the user's eyes.