Pre-requisites
- Single Script installed to track data on your website.
- Sales Data configured to display all metrics and insights.
Both are required to display full metrics and uncover actionable insights.
For your metrics to be accurate and useful, Sales Data must be configured correctly. An incorrect setup can lead to misleading results. Refer to Sales Data for proper configuration instructions.
How to Improve Search Performance
Once your Single Script and Sales Data are properly configured, each metric in the Statistics Tool will help you understand shopper behavior and purchasing patterns.
In this section, you’ll learn:
- How to interpret and analyze each metric.
- What actions to take in each situation.
We recommend focusing on tracking, reviewing, and improving your CTR, as this is one of the easiest metrics to enhance with Doofinder’s Search. A higher CTR indicates that shoppers are successfully finding what they’re looking for.
1. Searches Performed in the Search Bar - Insights and Actions
| Scenario | What It Means | What To Do |
| Percentage of searches stays stable or slightly fluctuating | Normal behavior. No action needed. | — |
| Percentage of Search and traffic session decrease | Fewer visitors overall (seasonality, campaigns or usual traffic behaviour). | Monitor behavior |
| Only Search usage down* | Shoppers may not find it helpful or easy to use. Reduced engagement and search volume. | Improve Search Volume |
* Keep in mind that if the percentage of search usage is low while traffic sessions are unusually high it may indicate that your store is being targeted by bots. In this case, you should block the bots attacking your website. Refer to this faq for more information.
How to Improve Search Volume
Make your search bar more helpful and intuitive, helping them find products faster and easily:
- Keep your search box visible at all times. A hidden or hard-to-see search bar prevents shoppers from finding what they need.
- Add Filters so shoppers can refine results faster.
- Offer Sorting Options for flexible ordering (price, newest, etc.).
- Use Complements such as Guided Search, searching by image or voice, or More Like This.
- Review Relevance Criteria to ensure your most relevant products appear first, ordering results by the feed fields you choose. Always test changes in Results Preview as it will modify all search queries results.
2. CTR: Searches Lead to Clicks - Insights and Actions
| Scenario | What It Means | What To Do |
| Percentage of CTR stays stable or with minor changes | Normal fluctuation. No action needed. | — |
| Percentage of CTR decreases but search usage stays stable | Results may be less relevant. | Improve Results Relevance |
| Percentage of CTR, search usage and/or traffic sessions decrease | Expected drop from less traffic. | If Search performance is the cause, review Improve Search Volume |
How to Improve Results Relevance
If the CTR decreases, it may indicate that results shown are not relevant to the search query performed. Use these optimization features to improve accuracy of search results.
- Optimize your Search Fields by adding or removing fields and changing their weights you can improve search results accuracy, helping you gain control over the criteria of results displayed. Always test results for different search queries in Results Preview.
- Adjust Relevance Criteria to modify the order of search results. Always test results for different search queries in Results Preview.
- Use Custom Results to highlight strategic or popular products for particular searched terms. Very useful to improve the average position of more clicked products that are badly positioned in results.
- Exclude items from searched terms with Excluded Results to adapt search results to your business needs.
- Activate Automatic Boosting to automatically promote products with higher click rates.
- Add Filters and offer Sorting Options to refine search results.
- Add Complements to your search results to give your shoppers more variety and another way to refine their searches.
3. Search-Driven Sales - Insights and Actions
| Scenario | What It Means | What To Do |
| Sales driven by search stay stable or presents minor changes | Normal fluctuation. No action needed. | — |
| Fewer total purchases (search and website) | Fewer purchases overall. | Monitor behavior |
| Sales driven by search decrease but same number of purchases | Average order value likely dropped. | Review average order value by hovering over the block and compare it to the last 6 months average order value. |
4. CR: Conversion Rate - Insights and Actions
| Scenario | What It Means | What To Do |
| Percentage of CR stays stable or slightly fluctuating | Normal fluctuation. No action needed. | — |
| Percentage of CR and CTR decreases, but number of searches is stable or increases. | Results are likely irrelevant or feed quality is poor. | Improve Results Relevance and review the Product Data Feed. |
| Percentage of CR decreases, but CTR and number of searches is stable. | Fewer purchases over similar search volume. | Monitor behavior |
| Percentage of CR and traffic sessions or search volume have decreased | If traffic sessions are low: expected behavior during low-traffic periods.
If search volume is low: results are likely irrelevant, or may not find search easy to use. |
If CTR or the percentage of users that leave without clicking is low, read How to Improve Results Relevance.
If searches have decreased, read Improve Search Volume. |
How to Enhance Search Performance Compared to Industry Benchmark
Hover over CTR and CR metrics in the Stats panel to see your store’s performance against similar businesses.
To match or outperform the benchmark, enable these optimization features:
Make sure your Industry is set correctly in Configuration > General Settings > Industry, otherwise, benchmarks will be inaccurate.
| Feature | Helps You… | Learn More |
| Automatic Boosting | Promote high-performing products automatically. | Boosting |
| AI Search Personalization | Adapt results to each shopper’s preferences. | AI Personalization |
| Synonyms | Map equivalent or misspelled search terms without changing your feed. | Synonyms |
| Suggestions | Offer autocomplete ideas while typing. | Suggestions |
| Guided Search | Display visual filter shortcuts under the bar when a search query offers many outcomes. | Guided Search |
| Recommended Products (Initial / No Results) | Display popular products or Custom Results products to appear before your shoppers start searching, or when no results are found. | Layer Settings |
How to Improve Shoppers Search Behavior
| Behavior Metric | What It Indicates | If It Declines / Changes | Likely Cause | Recommended Actions |
| Likelihood to Buy When Using Search | Compares how much more likely shoppers who use search are to buy vs. those who don’t. | Fewer purchases from search users. | Search impact declining or results less relevant. | Review CTR, CR , and Zero-Result Searches to identify weak points. Apply related improvement actions. |
| Shopper Using Search Bar | % of visitors using the search bar. | Usage below average or below industry benchmark. | Search bar not visible, accessible, or intuitive enough. | Follow Improve Search Volume steps to enhance visibility, usability, and engagement. |
| Average Position of Clicked Results | Average rank where users click a product in results. | Clicks happen deeper/lower in the list (higher numerical position). | Irrelevant ranking or hidden top products. | Review the Searched Terms chart in Stats, and use Automatic Boosting or Custom Results to promote high-interest items to top positions. Review How to Improve Results Relevance for more. |
| Users Leaving Without Clicking or Interacting | % of searchers who don’t click any product. | Rate increases, or bounce rate above industry average. | Irrelevant or confusing results. | Improve results relevance, review Fix Zero-Result Searches, and reduce mismatched queries. |
| Zero-Results Searches | % of queries without results. | Increase or higher than industry average. | Misspellings, missing catalog items, or new customer demand. | Use Synonyms, Custom Results, Redirections, or Recommended Products Query if No Results to guide shoppers. |
How to Improve Zero-Results Searches
The Fix Zero-Results carousel displays search terms with no matching results for the selected period.
From the Fix button, you can create:
- Synonyms to map related or misspelled words.
- Custom Results to manually assign products for broad or thematic queries.
Other Ways to Improve Zero-Results Searches
If a zero-result term doesn’t fit the above, consider:
- Adding new products to your catalog that match emerging search trends.
- Creating Redirections for non-product searches, such as “registration”, “contact”, or a category page for a new campaign, ensuring shoppers always find something relevant.
- Add Recommended Products Query if No Results to show most popular products or a Custom Result for the search term to always show results.
- Write a Custom HTML if no results to show a message that encourages searching when applying a recommended products query is not desired.