Jason Owen, of DminSite, a popular Managed E-Commerce Services provider to the catalog industry, continues his comprehensive critique of ScoutingBooks.com. This part focuses on changes that he recommends for ScoutingBooks search engine.

Search Results Page Recommendations
General Comment: Our site analytics show that shoppers who use the Site Search feature can be twice as likely to make a purchase compared to other site visitors! In addition, the FEWER the number of items returned on the page, the HIGHER the conversion rate on average. Its critical that marketers have analytic reports to understand how the site search feature is performing (on a keyword by keyword basis) and that you have a tool that enables you to continually optimize the performance of this important site feature.

You should receive a monthly or bi-weekly report that shows every keyword searched on your site that returned a No Results Found page. Then take corrective steps to using a search dictionary upload process to re-direct people searching on these terms to other products or categories on your site where you have relevant items.

At the top of the results page, you should clearly display the specific keyword or string that the shopper typed into the search box.

Instead of a No Results Found page, give these shoppers a default page that, in addition to referencing that no direct matches were found, shows them other suggested items that are top selling products from some of your most popular categories.

We suggest that you display the item price (or As low as $X.XX if multiple pricing is available for the item) along with a Buy Now and More Info button beside every product returned on the results page. For products that have a headline or short copy we recommend that you display this text below or beside each product on the search results page as well.

Your search results page should allow the shopper to sort the items returned alphabetically, by price, or by most popular (the default.) In addition, you can allow the shopper to view thumbnail photos (or not) and short descriptions (or not) to make it easier for them to quickly scan all applicable items. The site should then remember the shoppers viewing preference (stored at the cookie ID level) and automatically pre-sort all future search results pages based on the shoppers prior preference.

You should consider displaying product name text links to the last three or four Items Previously Viewed by the visitor. This greatly enhances the ease of comparison-shopping on your site. It also can increase your average order size since youre allowing shoppers to cross-sell themselves into buying more items.

Also consider displaying text links to the last three to four Items Youve Purchased by the visitor as a permanent part of the site navigation. This is especially important if you sell gift items or products that are consumable or need replenishing over time. This technique makes it much easier for people to make repeat purchases from you.

Develop a directed search tool that allows your marketing staff to manually determine the product matches that are most profitable for very broad keywords that would otherwise return too many results using the default site search logic. Showing too many search results for a particular keyword/string can actually decrease the conversion rate! Using your site search analytics (noted above) you can determine which keywords are commonly searched on your site but produce a lower than average conversion rate - these are the terms that should be optimized using a directed search tool.

Develop a search results re-order tool that uses an algorithm to auto-sort items that match a particular keyword based on the historical clicks and orders for every item thats been returned previously for that keyword/string. This technique can double the conversion rate within your site search function - which is already one of the most profitable areas of a Web site!

So, what do you think ScoutingBooks.com needs to do to improve sales? Take a look at the site and give us your feedback in our forum.

Tomorrow, we continue with Owens evaluation and some advice from our Executive Editor, Dan Muse.

Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.