If you have a large dynamic website (run by a content management system) with a high volume of information, implementing a search feature may increase your website's usability and user-friendliness. Website visitors are seldom willing to browse through each section of your website, reviewing each product or service in search of satisfying their need.
But a website search engine can offer more than improving user-friendliness; it can help you enhance your web marketing strategy, and indeed your overall marketing strategy, to become a highly effective marketing tool.
By storing search queries in your database and reviewing them through your private administration area (or content management system), you can pinpoint more precisely what your website visitors are looking for when they visit your website.
This simple feature can help you:
1. Improve your Website If you find a popular search query that is not inline with what you are able to offer, you may want to develop content that can satisfy their search in some way, rather than leaving them with a blank "No Results Found" page, leaving the visitor feeling either slightly disappointed, or so frustrated that he may look for the information a another website.
2. Improve your Website Promotion Activities You may also find that the content you are creating is often searched for through major search engines, thus you are improving your search engine accessibility while satisfying your visitors simultaneously.
Monitoring the search queries can also tell you what kind of traffic you are attracting to your website - if the search queries are extremely inconsistent with what you have to offer, it may mean your efforts have been targeting the wrong audience and you may need to act fast if you want your website to help you achieve your objectives.
3. Improve Your Business A search query may even lead to an exciting bright idea for a new way to grow your business; whether it be a new way to diversify through a new product or service you have discovered a market for, or improving the way you communicate your offering to customers in all your marketing communications by learning to speak their language and avoid excessive use of jargon that only you and your competitors understand.
Implementing a search feature on your website is a great way to get more from your website traffic than a mere sale or email requesting your services - they are helping you develop new ideas for your website and your business without even knowing it!
About the Author
By John Simms of Eiledon Solutions, a http://www.eiledon.co.za>web design company based in Cape Town, South Africa.