Search Insights

Search Insights utilizes both SearchSpring and Google Analytics data to present important metrics breakdowns for searches performed on your site. You can use this report to analyze how shoppers are interacting with the various search queries on your site, and you can take action directly from this report.

Date Range

The date selector at the top right of the page is used to change the range of dates for which you'd like to view details of this report. 

Highlights

The Highlights section at the top of the page gives you a quick, high-level view of metrics related to your site search performance.

Popular Searches (What People Want)

Shows a quick summary of the most popular search queries on your site within the currently selected date range. The pie chart can be hovered over to see more details. 

Top Grossing Searches (What People Spend)

Shows a quick summary of the search queries with the highest Page Value (See "Page Value" below) on your site within the currently selected date range. The pie chart can be hovered over to see more details. 

Top Converting Searches (What People Buy)

Shows a quick summary of the highest-converting (see "Conversion" below) search queries on your site within the currently selected date range. The pie chart can be hovered over to see more details. 

Search Terms Tree

The Search Terms Tree provides a valuable interactive way to explore the common associations that search terms have when shoppers are looking for products. Here you can infer how your customers typically infer words together, such as brands that are commonly searched with the item name. Exploring can also help to identify potential synonyms, common misspellings, and popular product type demand at a high level.

Jump to a popular search word

You can begin or change your exploration by selecting any of the top "popular search words" above the tree.

Interacting with the tree

The word in the center is the current reference point to focus on. Words branched to the left are those that are typed before the center word, such as "floral print". Words branched on the right are those typed afterwards, such as "print dress". You can click any of the branched words to make it the new focus point. 

Breakdown

The breakdown table gives you direct insight into your store's search history at a granular level. Here you can view specific analytics related to each search query. 

Presets

There are a few helpful preset buttons above the table that configure the table into specific views that hides/shows various columns, and sorts some columns as well. 

Search Query

The query that was searched for.

Requests

Requests can help you gauge how engaged shoppers are when searching for this query. It shows the total number of times a product set was requested by and shown to a shopper on this search results page. This includes when a shopper originally performed the search, as well as each time a shopper clicks a filter and changes pagination (goes to page 2 of results, etc).

Tip: Compare "Requests" to "Visits" to compare how many people are searching this query (Visits) versus how engaged they are when searching for this query (Requests).

Products

The number of products that were shown for this search query. 

Bounce Rate

A "bounce" is when a shopper searched for this query once, but didn't explore it any further. The "Bounce Rate" is the percentage of shoppers who performed this search without exploring it further. A higher bounce rate indicates lower interaction from your shoppers who searched this query. 

Calculation: Bounces / Visits

Learn more about how Google Analytics calculates Bounce Rate here.

Page Value

Each time a transaction occurs on your site, Google Analytics identifies the pages that the purchasing shopper visited prior to making their purchase. It then splits out the revenue from the transaction to each page that was viewed, effectively giving monetary credit to that page. 

The Page Value metric can be used to identify a search query's financial influence by showing its share of revenue. Search queries with higher Page Value have a higher tendency to be viewed by customers who eventually make higher purchases. 

Learn more about how Google Analytics calculates Page Value here.

Calculation: Transaction Revenue / Unique Page Views

Visits

A Visit (or Session) identifies a group of shopper interactions grouped within a period of time. Sessions of a single shopper are typically split apart if they go for longer than 30 minutes without visiting a new page. You can use Sessions to determine how many times shoppers have a web browsing session in which they searched for this query.

Learn more about how Google Analytics calculates Visits/Sessions here.

Transactions

The total number of transactions that occurred sometime shortly after a shopper searched this query. This can be used to gauge how likely someone searching for this query is to convert, when compared to Transaction numbers from other queries on this table. 

Conversion

The ratio of Transactions (see "Transactions" above) compared to Unique Page Views (see "Unique Page Views" below). This can be used to gauge how often a shopper makes a purchase after searching for this query. 

Calculation: Transactions / Unique Page Views

Entrances

The number of times this search query was the first page a shopper landed on during their Visit (See "Visits" above). This can be used to gauge the number of times shoppers begin their browsing by searching for this query.

Entrances is a subset of Page Views, and can be compared to the Page Views column to determine the ratio of how often this search is the first page a shopper landed on. 

Learn more about how Google Analytics calculates Entrances here.

Page Views

Page Views indicate the number of times a search results page was loaded or refreshed in a shopper's browser. This count can include the same shopper performing the search multiple times, multiple shoppers searching for the query one time, and everything in-between. 

This number will always be lower than (or equal to) the "Requests" column, since Requests include the original product listing load in addition to every product set change after the page is loaded (such as clicking facets and pagination). Page Views simply counts when the page itself loads in the browser. 

Tip: You can determine the ratio of how much your shoppers are clicking on pagination/facets on this search query by comparing the Page Views column to the Requests column.

Learn more about how Google Analytics calculates Page Views here.

Unique Page Views

A unique page view is counted once for each Visit this search was performed during, regardless of how many times it was viewed during that visit. Whether a single visit included 1 search for this query or 20 searches, it will still count for a single Unique Page View.

Learn more about how Google Analytics calculates Unique Page Views here.

Avg Time on Page(s)

The average amount of time (in seconds) that shoppers spend on this search results page before moving to a different page. 

Calculation: Total Time on Page / (Page Views - Exits)

Exit Rate

The ratio of how often this search query was the last page a shopper viewed during their Visit (See "Visits" above). This can be used to gauge the number of times shoppers end their browsing on this search query.

Calculation: Exits / Page Views

Learn more about how Google Analytics calculates Exit Rate here.

Actions

If you'd like to take some additional control over the behavior of a search results page, you can simply click the "Merchandise" link in the Actions column, which will take you directly to a campaign for that search.

If a campaign already exists for it, it will take you to the existing campaign. If not, it will create a new one for that search query. 

Table Tools

The table has various tools that allow you to easily navigate the data:

• Show Per Page: At the top left, you can select how many rows per page you want to view on this table.
• Search the table: You can filter the table to only show rows that contain certain terms by searching in the box at the top right.
• Show/Hide Columns (Gear): Clicking the gear icon at the top right allows you to select which columns you'd like to show or hide on the table, helping you to focus on what's important to you. 
• Export: Clicking an export button at the top right allows you to save a CSV or XLS file of this table. The exported file will include all of the data, not just the table page being viewed. 
• Pagination: The pagination buttons at the bottom of the table allow you navigate through each page of the table.