Harnessing dynamic boosts to improve revenue and delight customers

The sheer number of products sold online can make it difficult for shoppers to gauge the best options for their needs. Especially for those who don't exactly know what they want, or are looking for e-commerce platforms to help them with their purchasing decisions. 

What's more, while 80% of e-commerce platforms believe they offer personalized experiences, only 60% of consumers agree. This is why brands need to fine tune their search experience beyond keyword-based search in order to improve the relevancy and accuracy of their search results. One way to do this is with dynamic boosting of certain products or categories based on user data. 

Dynamic boosts are a feature of site search engines that allows brands to dynamically increase the relevance of certain records for a given search query. This means that you can customize the ranking of results for a given query on the fly, based on your own business needs and changing consumer preferences. 

For example, let's say you have a clothing store and you want to push items that are on sale to the top of the results for a given query. With dynamic boosts, you can easily do this by boosting the relevant records when someone searches for something like "women's clothes" or "wrap dress". 

What are dynamic boosts? 

Dynamic boosts are a feature of search engines that allow users to dynamically adjust the ranking of results based on certain criteria. By allowing website operators to specify their own boost criteria, search engines can provide more relevant and customized results for each individual user.

Boost criteria can be based on a variety of factors, such as the user's location, past search history, cart additions, purchase behavior, preferences, or even the time of day. By taking into account these and other factors, dynamic boosts can help ensure that users always see the most relevant results for their specific needs.

In addition to making results more relevant, dynamic boosts can also help improve the overall quality of search results. By giving users the ability to fine-tune their searches, search engines can better identify and filter out lower-quality results. This ultimately leads to a better overall experience for all users.

Modes of dynamic boosts

There are two modes to use dynamic boosts: records and categories.

1. Records

It allow you to boost the relevance of specific items in your catalog. For example, if you have a clearance sale on winter coats, you can use a record to boost the relevance of those items. Or, if you want to ensure that items from a new collection are always well-ranked, you can create a record for those items.

Records-based dynamic boosts are usually triggered by specific events, such as a user adding an item to their cart or visiting a product page. These events are then recorded in the e-commerce platform's database. Based on these records, the platform can then adjust the ranking of individual products in real-time.

For example, let's say a user adds a product to their cart but doesn't complete the purchase. The e-commerce platform could then give that product a temporary boost in the search results, making it more likely that the user will see it and buy it. Or, if a user frequently searches for a particular type of product but never buys anything, the platform could start demoting those products in the search results to avoid showing them too often.

2. Categories

let you boost the relevance of all items in a particular category. This is useful if you want to make sure that your customers always see the latest products in their search results. By boosting the results of certain categories, you can ensure that the most relevant results are always returned for your users. This can be especially useful if you have a large catalog of products, as it can help you narrow down the search results and focus on the most relevant items. 

In addition to showing relevant results, category mode dynamic boosts can also help you upsell and cross-sell products. For example, if a user is viewing a men’s shirt category page, you can boost items such as ties and belts that go well with shirts. This helps increase the chances that the user will add more than one item to their cart.

How do dynamic boosts improve the search experience?  

Dynamic boosts are an excellent way to promote relevant and high-converting products and categories through search. By taking into account the user’s search intent and past behavior, dynamic boosts can provide more relevant and personalized results. This can lead to improved conversions and higher customer satisfaction.

Here are some of the major advantages of leveraging dynamic boosts for your e-commerce site:

- Improved conversions: 

Dynamic boosts can be used to target specific audiences, such as returning customers or those who have abandoned their shopping carts. By doing so, businesses can improve their chances of conversion by showing these users relevant results.

Dynamic boosts can also be used to promote special offers or new products, which can be an opportunity to further fuel conversions on your e-commerce store.

- Enhanced customer experience: 

Dynamic boosts can be used to weight certain results more heavily based on customer interactions. For example, if a customer frequently clicks on results from a particular brand, those results will be given more prominence in future searches. For search engines that use machine learning (ML), the underlying algorithms also keep getting better at understanding the search intent of users, leading to more and more personalized search experiences – the perfect recipe for happier customers.

- Greater average order value: 

Boosts result in site visitors seeing results that they are more likely to click on. Thus, they improve the click-through rate and thus, the average order value (AOV), which typically translates into greater revenue for our business.

Using dynamic boosts to build a smarter e-commerce search engine 

Dynamic boosts can be used in all three types of e-commerce searches (product, brand, and category) to improve results. In product searches, dynamic boosts can be used to account for factors like seasonality and popularity. For example, if a user searches for "men's t-shirt" in the middle of winter, dynamic boosts can ensure that results for long-sleeved shirts are given higher priority than results for short-sleeved shirts.

When configuring dynamic boosts, there are a number of factors that you will need to take into account, including the following:

The relevance of the content: The first and foremost consideration when using dynamic boosts is the relevance of the content to the user's needs. If the content is not relevant, then it is unlikely that the user will be satisfied with the results of their query.

The popularity of the product: Another important factor to consider is the popularity of the product. Products that are more popular are likely to be more relevant to a user's needs, and thus should be given a higher boost than less popular products.

The price of the product: The price of a product is also a significant factor in determining its relevance. In general, cheaper products are more likely to be purchased than expensive products, and thus they should be given a higher boost.

The inventory level of the product: The inventory level of a product can also impact its relevance. If a product is out of stock, it may not be possible for a user to purchase it, and thus it should be given a lower boost.

Improve your bottom line with dynamic boosts

At the heart of it, dynamic boosting can significantly improve the relevancy of your e-commerce search results. By automatically adjusting the scores of certain products based on real-time user interactions and other factors, you can ensure that the most relevant items are always displayed at the top of the search results. This means happier customers and more sales for your business.

For a powerful AI-powered search engine with dynamic boosting capabilities and much more, look no further than Zevi. Zevi offers contextual search powered by AI and advanced ML algorithms. The result is an optimized search that understands user intent and delivers accurate, relevant and personalized search results. 

Interested in leveling up your site search? Check out our Shopify App, or reach out to us today to book a demo.