How to Give Your E-Commerce “No Results” Page the Power to Sell

How to Give Your E-Commerce No Results Page the Power to Sell
Have you ever been searching for a particular item and got a “no results” page? It’s upsetting, isn’t it? Your customers may sometimes experience this when they perform a search incorrectly or get lost in your site. This is why your “No results” should convey the elements listed in this post.

 

Maintaining UX

An e-commerce site must maintain professionalism, and they must show themselves to be helpful when their customer experiences problems with their site. Maintaining positive UX (user experience) on your site for both desktop and mobile users is critical in order to keep your site high in the search results and avoid frustrating your customers who visit your online store, otherwise they might leave without purchasing.

How to Use “No Results” Pages to Your Advantage

Sooner or later, your customers are going to access your “no results” page. It happens for a variety of reasons including inaccurate search terms, misunderstanding of how your site works, or any number of other reasons. Customers who visit an e-commerce site know that they may run into occasional search issues but remember that they don’t like to waste time. This is why their frustration tolerance may be short when they come across a no results page that is not optimized.
When users happen onto a page that does not provide them with results, they tend to experience instant frustration. This can make some jump off your page immediately, causing you to lose a potential customer or frustrate your current clients. Those who use your site frequently may understand your place better than others so they may use the “back” button to return to your site. Regardless of what they do when they see that they have landed on a “no results” page, it is likely to discourage the shopper.

But “no results” page are also the opportunity to propose similar items to your customers. If it respects some basic rules and really play its role of helper, it can help you make the sales.

How to give your e-commerce “no results” page the power to sell

When you are programming your site and using your automated technology solutions, have your IT people keep the following goals in mind for “no results” pages:
Prevent:
  • Try to prevent the occurrence of the “no results” page by offering your customers a search suggestions bar. Because the spelling is often wrong, the search will be efficient if the customer click directly on the proposed terms.
  • Give your potential customers some search instruction about the element your search engine needs in order to propose accurate result (like gender, size, location…).
  • Make sure that your e-commerce website understands languages differences and synonyms.
Recover
  • Clearly explain that there are no search results. Some users don’t realize that they got no results from their query because they may see links and other options on the “no results” page. You should make it clear that they should retry their search by stating clearly in your programming that their search did not turn up the results they wanted. Otherwise, they may get lost in the other links or options and navigate off of your site entirely.
  • Help the searcher moving forward and recover from a spelling mistake, offer spelling suggestions, identify errors, and provide helpful suggestions. Remember to keep your wording active and psychologically sound by being helpful but not critical. Your user came to your site for a positive experience and to find something quickly that they wanted from your site, so remember to encourage them to continue and not to give up.
Propose
  • Always propose alternatives results for the customer, you should propose them item that are the as similar as possible to what they are supposedly looking for. They might just be a clic away from finding what they came on your website for. Also, think about proposing to alert them whenever the item they want is available on your store.
  • Offer suggestions for moving forward.– Providing a search box so that the user can retry their search right on your page is a good idea.
Bonus

A great idea could be to use analytics to check upon what people are looking for on your website so that you can add those words to your product description, and even propose items you where not selling in the first place. But hey, what if people want to buy them after all?!

Example of Amazon Good “No Results” Page

In this example, Amazon has made good use of their “no results” page by placing necessary information for the online customer to keep searching. They clearly show that their page returned no result for the user specific search while proposing alternative result from curated search. This should encourage the customer to move forward with a new search and avoid further frustrations.

If you keep these tips in mind when designing your site and employ the use of AI, smart technology, and expert engineering, you can avoid a great deal of customer frustration with your e-commerce site when the results turn up a “no results” page. Your customers will appreciate it, and they’ll pay you back with customer loyalty and sales. And that’s the result YOU are looking for!
What are your best tips to turning your “no results” page into a plus towards conversion? Tell us below or tweet us!
 

Image credit : Lourenchyus Alfredo