The Artful Home retail web site sells the original work of artists, but finding desired items was not always easy before the site was redesigned last year, says Dawn Wayt, vice president of online marketing at The Guild Inc., The Artful Home’s parent company. One sure sign of trouble: 30% of searches on the site produced no results.
“Some people have a hard time spelling the word ‘jewelry,’” Wayt told attendees last week at the Internet Retailer Web Design ’08 Conference in Miami. “If jewelry was misspelled, they’d get a message saying, ‘Sorry, we don’t have any jewelry.'”
By examining web site logs of searches that produced no results, Wayt also found that the site was not connecting related terms. For instance, consumers typing in “pottery” were getting no results, because the site put those items under “ceramics.”
As part of a site redesign begun in 2006, The Artful Home deployed a site search tool from Endeca, which provides results for commonly misspelled words. And, instead of giving visitors a long list of results, the search results pages now allow consumers to refine their searches, such as by best sellers, newest items and price. The tool also allows The Artful Home to promote items featured in its catalog, and the retailer increased the size of images on search result pages.
There were other changes in navigation. In the previous design, the left side navigation consisted of a list of 25 categories. The new redesign features the five best-selling categories across the top of the page. It also includes such key items as gift suggestions and add-to-basket, and makes them visible without scrolling to the bottom of the page.
The new site went live in February 2007 and the results were dramatic, Wayt said. Sales from online marketing initiatives jumped 153%. As for searches producing no results, they dropped from 30% to 8%.
The Guild is No. 424 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
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