With the state of online shopping as it is today, with 61% of consumers beginning their hunt on Amazon, and a growing number taking their cues from TikTok and other social channels, it should come as no surprise that it’s more important than ever to be able to differentiate yourself as a retailer and help shoppers actually find what they’re looking for.
It should also come as no surprise that shoppers search uniquely. We’re all different and we all have our own habits of referring to items in our own specific ways. It’s key to consider that the person shopping online next to us may not refer to certain items in the same way, and keeping this in mind is a great way to solidify your ability to differentiate yourself among competitors.
The Gap in How Customers Search
The most challenging and important part for shoppers is for them to find the right item without the frustration and hassle. Although there is a clear and demonstrated gap in how customers search for the relevant products they’re looking to buy, they’re also absolutely going to leave your site when they can’t easily find what they’re looking for.
This is why it’s so important to implement the power of a robust, synonym-optimized product attribute taxonomy that actually converts. By implementing this and paying attention to “search diversity,” you as a retailer can make sure each consumer is finding what they want on your site – no matter how they describe it.
The Importance of Capturing Synonyms
In order to more closely predict how shoppers are likely to search for products, it’s crucial for retailers like yourself to utilize a language that puts customer-driven attributes first – not legacy, generic attributes. Legacy, out-of-the-box attributes only consider part of the picture – that of the merchant, the manufacturer, or distributor – and often aren’t optimized to capture the many ways in which shoppers in the real world actually search for products.
One of the best ways to make sure you’re capturing this language effectively is to capture synonyms – as in the other specific names or titles a shopper may refer to a product as.
For example, consider a tennis shoe vs. a sneaker, lip gloss vs. lip stain, a party dress vs. a cocktail dress, a sectional vs. a sofa, or a bracelet vs. a wristlet. What do you call these items? The fact is that capturing synonyms can make all the difference because there are hardly any products (if any) that only have one singular name we all refer to it by. Consider these additional fashion items and their synonyms below:
Enhance the Shopping Experience with Product Data Enrichment
As a brand, one of the best things you can do to enhance the shopping experience is to put an emphasis on capturing synonyms and focusing on product data enrichment. Expanding and enriching the product data and attributes assigned to any given product to encompass the wide variety of synonyms can fuel intuitive product discovery.
By thinking like your customer and capturing the language of the customer, and not merely the language of manufacturers or distributors, you can increase their ability to sell shoppers what they’re actually looking for when they’re looking for it – not missing out on trends, and decreasing the need to mark that inventory down later.
