As a CRO specialist, you often get the question “Aren't there some best practices you can share with us?” And although there are certainly a number of points you can always look at, the reaction is always that you can never know for sure without testing. What does have a positive effect on the conversion rate on one website has a negative effect on the other. This can be due to anything, such as the difference in target group, products or overall industry.
Even when it comes to the comment “We only want major tests that make an impact”, there is one that I now have a fairly standard answer to. Namely, the impact of an A/B test does not necessarily depend on how large or complex the test is in terms of design or structure. Even small changes can have a big impact, as long as you turn the right knobs. We would like to take you into a hypothesis that anyone could easily test on their webshop. It is not a best practice, but a change (in behavior) is guaranteed.
If the visitor already has some idea what he/she is looking for, it is crucial that you can facilitate this process as a webshop. We often see two ways visitors start to navigate, 1) using the navigation menu or 2) using the search function.
If you take a look at a tool like Google Analytics, you will quickly see that visitors who have used the search function have a higher conversion rate than visitors who have not. Now, we should not confuse this correlation with causality. It's not that because people use this, they convert better. No, visitors who use the search bar are likely to have a higher purchase intent because they know better what they're looking for. But there is still an interesting potential here that we want to explore further.
Within the search bar, there are several ways you can optimize. First of all, it is of course important which search module/engine is behind the search bar. The better it is set up, linked to product feeds and has synonyms or spelling errors set, the better the search bar will perform. Of course, you can also test the position and visibility of the search bar. Only fully visible after a click on a magnifying glass icon or fully visible immediately? The optimization we want to highlight is an example of a small change that can make a lot of impact, namely specifying the placeholder text in the search bar.
The placeholder text in the search bar is often very generic, such as terms like “Search”, “What are you looking for?” or “Browse our range”. So to speak, this is very generic and does not give the visitor any extra guidance on what to look for on the website in the first place. Specificity is a technique that is used here. When you provide specific details or information, the message becomes more concrete and tangible. So it will be easier to process (Kardes, Posavac and Cronley, 2004). People often respond better to specific information than to vague information, and it also shows that the organization behind the message understands the visitor's specific needs and wishes. We would like to show you how we tested this for our customers.
This is a hypothesis that we tested with various customers in various industries. Although there were certainly differences in the results, there was also a clear similarity: a change in behavior around the search bar.
First, with Tegeldepot, a webshop for sanitary facilities and tiles. Here was the text in the search bar “Search the entire store”. By adapting this to “Look for tiles, sanitary ware and bathroom items” over a three-week test period, we made sure that the search bar 25.9% has been used more often. This subsequently even resulted in an uplift of 10.0% in the conversion rate. What's good to mention is that the new texts are based on terms that we saw people looking for.
Another example comes from XXL Nutrition, one of the largest online providers of sports nutrition and supplements in the Netherlands. Once again, this is where the generic text was “Search the entire store” used. In this test, we adjusted this to “Search for supplements, accessories, and more”. In this case, the result was an uplift of 1.25% in the number of searches and an increase in 2.74% in the conversion rate. As you can see, very different percentages than in the Tegeldepot test, but also certainly impact. We are not completely satisfied here yet and the next iteration that we are going to test is already ready, namely “”Look for sports nutrition, supplements, and more”. So just a slightly different approach where we will see how this will influence behavior.
The last example that we will explain here comes from Disposable Discounter, a provider of packaging and disposable items (such as plastic or paper cups) that mainly focuses on the B2B market. Here, too, the starting point was very standard:”Search & find! ''. By looking at the search terms that came into Analytics, we formulated several variants, including the winner. “Look for packaging, glasses, cutlery and more..”. Here, the number of searches increased by 5.70%, which subsequently translated into an uplift of 4.90% in the conversion rate.
I won't end this blog with a particular statement about which placeholder text you should use on your webshop because, as you can see, the results can always vary. However, I would definitely recommend that you test with this. Take a good look at what your visitors are looking for, formulate different variants and test the impact. Would you like to discuss with us here or about other hypotheses? Don't hesitate to contact us.
