Lexiconn has developed a Search Statistics Module that shows all product keyword searches by IP, date and time, and what those searches return. Results can be sorted in various ways and sliced by timeframe. Wildcards are permissible in viewing individual keywords. ("*widget*" returns widget, red widget or widgets)
This free module (for Lexiconn hosted sites) is a must have. Now we can determine whether site visitors are searching for products we don't offer. We can see whether customer searches fail to turn up relevant products that we do offer.
So what have we learned from the software? Mostly we've learned that a huge number of our Shopsite product searches turn up NOTHING even when our site offers exactly what the customer is seeking! As a result, we've been busy polishing our keywords and stopwords to assure that products are presented properly to shoppers. We've learned that we can't expect the customer use repeated searches after the first one fails. Visitors often leave after just one failed search. We've also learned that many customers are REALLY bad at using a Google style search form. Misspellings and typos abound.
Ultimately I'm learning that free-form search boxes aren't very useful shopping aids. Sometimes they do more harm than good. Shopsite's search simply isn't smart enough. And customers seem to know that because only a small portion of our visitors use the search form; the rest prefer to drill down thru our product categories.
Anyone else using this new module and want to compare notes?
(I'm not affiliated with Lexiconn except as a customer)