Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
We immediately notice that there is interest for a unique item and there is no
content to support it. as you'll recall, we saw interest for “mobile” content, but none
is provided. You should check every item and confirm that you do not provide content
that matches this search term. Watch this list to make sure your internal site search
engine is always tuned the way it should be.
suppose you do not offer Widget a but you have many requests for it; should
you start offering it? this is a great debate to take on, and depending on your volume,
the discussion might help you decide what to research (though it doesn't replace market
research).
the internal search conversion report shows the number of actions performed
during a visit that contained an internal search as well as the corresponding internal
search conversion rates. Use this report to determine how well your visitors respond to
various calls to action on your website in conjunction with their use of internal search.
the internal search conversion metric is calculated by dividing the number of actions
by the number of unique internal searches and shows the conversion rate for visitors
who performed an internal search.
i am hesitant in using internal campaign management and internal conversions,
including internal site search, as it is extremely difficult to measure true cause and
effect. therefore, i have not included an example of that report in this topic.
Yahoo! also provides an internal search Usage report, which shows the occur-
rence of internal searches on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. the internal search
Usage metric is calculated by dividing the number of unique internal searches by the
total number of visits. the metric reveals the proportion of visits that included internal
searches out of the total number of visits. Figure 10.28 is an example of an internal
search Usage report.
the internal search Usage report, as shown in Figure 10.28 without any filters
or segments applied, is not too useful as is. i recommend that this is not the typical
trend chart that you focus on driving up and to the right.
You would, however, like to watch the trends for unique segments over time.
imagine that you changed your layout or your Merchandising categorization; you
would want to watch a specific document group or a specific product subcategory
and the use of internal site searches.
i believe it is important for you to understand why people search, beyond the
traditional debate on whether they are search- or navigational-dominant visitors.
the most obvious way to figure out why visitors search and what brought them
to this point is to determine from which pages they search and how they got there.
imagine the scenario where your visitors keep searching for Widget a in a different
product category than you initially put it in? the answer is a great eye-opener beyond
the search phrases themselves.
274
