How We Enhanced Our Quick Commerce Search Experience with 4 Features
As a Search Experience team, we understand that the search process is a critical part of our users’ shopping journey. We know that a poor search experience can lead to frustration and, ultimately, result in our users abandoning their search and leaving our platform. That’s why we have been working tirelessly to address our users’ pain points and enhance their search experience.
Users’ search experience can be divided into two parts: pre-search and search results. The pre-search screen is where users land when they click on the search bar, and the search results screen is where they see the products related to their search.
We listened to our users and realized that they had 2 important problems:
- They encountered zero results or dead ends when searching for a term.
- They need more options before their search.
Although both of our users’ problems are important, we believe that the first problem of encountering zero results or dead ends when searching for a term was in a higher priority than the second one. This is because it directly impacts the users’ ability to find what they are looking for and can lead to frustration and abandonment of the search process.
To solve this problem, we decided to display shop’s popular products in the search results screen because providing users with shop’s popular products when their search doesn’t yield any results can keep them engaged and prevent them from leaving our platform.
After solving the first problem, we focused on the importance of providing users with more options before their search. This can help them refine their search and find exactly what they are looking for. One of the key pain points that users face when shopping online is the need to spend a lot of time searching for products they have purchased in the past. Often, they might forget the name of the product or simply not remember that they have bought it before. This can lead to a frustrating experience where users have to spend a lot of time searching for products they have already bought.
To address this issue, we decided to display user’s past purchases in pre-search screen.
This feature allows users to easily find the products they need and add the products they have purchased in the past with one click to their cart. This not only saves time but also ensures that users can easily find and buy the products they love.
Another key pain point that users face when shopping online is that users may not know exactly what they are looking for or may be unsure about what to search for.
By displaying shop’s top 10 popular search items in pre-search screen, users can quickly explore and discover the most searched products without even having to search for them.
This can save users time and effort, and also potentially lead them to discover products they may not have otherwise found. Additionally, this feature can also help users who may be browsing and looking for inspiration or ideas, as they can see what other users are searching for and find inspiration from there. However, we faced different problem. If we displayed “shop’s top 10 popular search items in pre-search screen” before changing recent search UI, we might not be using the pre-search screen as effectively as possible. The reason is that the recent searches displayed as a list takes up more space, making it difficult to fit both the list and the popular searches section on the screen after displaying user’s past purchases in the same screen.
Therefore, we decided to change the recent search UI from a list to a pill first, providing a more efficient and visually appealing experience for our users.
A pill design allows users to quickly recognize and select their past searches from a single, condensed area, whereas a list design can be harder to navigate. Additionally, by streamlining the design of the pre-search screen, users will be more likely to use the screen more frequently and find the products they are looking for faster.
After changing the recent search UI, we added a section that displays the shop’s top 10 popular search item. By implementing these features in this order, we believe we can use the pre-search screen space effectively and offer users more options to explore shop’s products.
In summary, these four features are designed to enhance the search experience in our quick commerce application and provide more options for our users. We believe that by displaying popular products instead of dead ends, past purchases, and top search items in the pre-search screen, we can help users find what they need faster and with less frustration. We are committed to continuously improving our users’ search experience and appreciate your feedback. Happy searching and shopping!
