How to grow your revenue using data driven search and discovery

With businesses collecting more data than ever before, it's easy to get lost in a sea of information without any meaningful insights or actions. But what if your customers’ search was personalized based on their past purchases and interests? What if the website offered filters to refine search results and product recommendations tailored specifically to their needs?

This is where data-driven search and discovery comes in. By leveraging customer data, businesses can create personalized experiences that not only improve the user experience but also drive revenue growth. In fact, according to a study by McKinsey, personalized experiences lead to a 20% increase in sales.

Let's explore the power of data-driven search and discovery and how it can transform the way businesses interact with their customers.

Data-driven search and discovery

Data-driven search and discovery is the process of finding and exploring data, products, or services through search queries, filters, or recommendations using customer data. It is a crucial aspect of ecommerce that can help businesses drive revenue growth by providing personalized experiences to customers.

Here's a stepwise breakdown of how data-driven search works:

1. Customer behavior: By analyzing customer behavior on your website, you can understand what they're looking for, what products they're interested in, and how they search for them.

2. Interests and preferences: You can use data on customer interests and preferences to create more targeted and personalized search experiences.

3. Past orders: By analyzing a customer's past orders, you can understand what they've bought before and recommend similar products or complementary items.

4. Time spent on the website: By tracking how much time a customer spends on your website, you can understand their level of engagement and interest in your products. This data can be used to improve search results and make the experience more engaging.

5. Customer feedback: By collecting customer feedback on your search functionality, you can understand how customers perceive your search results and make improvements accordingly.

These data points can be used to optimize your search algorithms and provide personalized recommendations to customers. By using data-driven search, businesses can improve the user experience, increase engagement, and drive revenue growth.

To understand how all of these steps translate into real-life processes and benefits, here are some examples of how companies are using data-driven search and discovery to enhance their customers' experience and drive revenue growth:

1. Amazon - Amazon uses data-driven search to analyze customer behavior and personalize their search results accordingly. They track user preferences, browsing history, and purchasing behavior to make recommendations for similar products, and also use filters to narrow down searches by customer specifications.

2. Airbnb - Airbnb uses data-driven search to personalize the search results for each customer. They use a mix of customer behavior data, such as searches and booking history, and external data, such as weather and local events, to suggest personalized experiences for each user.

3. Spotify - Spotify's recommendation system is based on data-driven search and discovery. They track user behavior, including what songs they listen to, how often they skip a song, and what playlists they create, to make personalized recommendations for new music that they may like.

Implementing data-driven search and discovery

Now that we understand how data-driven search works and how it can benefit businesses, let's dive into the key steps involved in implementing it.

Understand user intent

The first step in data-driven search and discovery is understanding your customers. By analyzing customer behavior, interests, and preferences, you can gain insights into their intent and tailor your content and search results accordingly. For example, if you notice that many customers are searching for a particular product or service, you can optimize your search algorithms to display that product or service prominently (also known as collaborative filtering). 

Optimize search personalization

By optimizing your search functionality, you can improve the user experience and drive revenue growth. You can use customer data to personalize search results and display relevant results to each customer. You can also add advanced search features like visual search, synonym and typo tolerant search to create a seamless search experience for users. Examples of search personalization include - 

• Showing different results for different users based on their past behavior
• Personalized recommendations based on past searches and browsing behavior
• Allowing users to save their favorite searches and items for later

Use filters to improve product discovery

Filters are an excellent way to improve the discovery experience on your website. By providing customers with multiple filter and facet options, you can help them refine their search results based on various criteria such as price, color, size, and more. This can help customers find exactly what they are looking for, which can lead to increased sales. For example, if you notice that many customers are searching for products in a particular price range, you can offer filter options for that price range to help them find what they're looking for more easily.

Use product recommendations to drive sales

Product recommendations are a powerful tool for driving sales. By analyzing customer behavior and preferences, you can offer targeted recommendations for products or services that they may be interested in. For example, if a customer has recently purchased a product, you can offer recommendations for complementary products or services.

Employ A/B testing

A/B testing involves creating two versions of a page or feature and testing them with a sample of customers to determine which version performs better. A/B testing can be used to test anything from the layout of your search results page to the wording of your product descriptions. By splitting your traffic between two (or more) versions of a page and measuring the conversion rate for each, you can quickly and easily identify which approach is most effective. For example, you could test different filter options or search result layouts to see which one leads to more conversions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, data-driven search and discovery can help businesses grow their revenue by providing a better customer experience and personalized results. To implement it effectively, businesses must first understand their customers' intent and preferences. By analyzing user behavior and search patterns, companies can optimize search personalization and improve the discovery experience through filters and product recommendations. A/B testing can help refine these efforts and ensure that they are producing the desired results.

Ultimately, the key to success in data-driven search and discovery is to use customer data to create personalized experiences that drive revenue growth. By leveraging data effectively, businesses can improve their bottom line 2while also providing better service to their customers. Whether it's through tailored search results, personalized product recommendations, or intuitive filters, data-driven search and discovery has the potential to revolutionize the ecommerce landscape and help businesses stay ahead of the competition.

With the help of tools like Zevi, businesses can easily implement these strategies and start seeing results. Zevi is an AI-powered search and discovery solution that packs potent search features such as natural language search, autocorrect, synonym and typo tolerance, advanced filters and facets, search merchandising, and a lot more. We encourage you to try out Zevi's demo today and see how data-driven search and discovery can help grow your revenue.