Learn how to find unmet product demand and how to optimize your store using search reports

Hi!

Today I'm going to show you two undervalued and underutilized Shopify reports you can use to:

1. Find unmet product demand in your store. This tells you what your visitors are looking for in your store but can't find. In other words, opportunities for product expansions.

2. Find out what products your visitors have trouble finding in your store. This enables you to optimize your store navigation which increases your conversion rates.

1. Find unmet product demand with the top online store searches with no results report

To find unmet product demand in your store, go to Reports and find "Top online store searches with no results" in the Behavior category. In the report, select the last 90 days as the date range - or whatever you find suitable.

What you're looking at then is a list of searches on your site where the search didn't return any results. In other words, where your visitor couldn't find what they were searching for.

In my case, this looks like the below. The most searched term that didn't return any results is "strømper", which means socks in Danish. Number 2 is "hjemmesko", which means slippers. Implicitly, we should probably consider finding a great supplier of socks and slippers.

2. Optimize your store with the top online store searches (with results) report

To find out what your customers have trouble finding in your store, find the "Top online store searches" report in the same behavior section. Again, select a 90-day date range or whatever you find suitable.

Now you have a list of all the searches in your store where your store returned results - the opposite of the above report. What you're looking for are terms/products that you believe your customers should be able to easily find, but for some reason chooses to search for instead. This might be that they just prefer searching, but often it’s more likely that they didn’t find it easy to find using the “normal” way of navigation; your menu.

In our case, our most searched term is "Brandtex", which is one of the brands we sell in our store. This tells me that we should probably make it easier for visitors to find all products from Brandtex in a "Shop by brands" menu or the like. 

The second most searched term is "Kjoler", which means dresses. As we have removed our dresses category on purpose due to low stock, this tells me that we should probably make an effort to find more dress suppliers.

Finally, if you look closely, you'll see that "strømper" (socks) and "hjemmesko" (slippers) from the above report is in this report too. This means that at some point visitors were able to get results when searching from these terms. Maybe in a deleted product, blog, or on a page. Therefore, look for product expansion in this list as well. Even though your store returns results for the search term, it might be an opportunity if it’s a narrow selection. Only you can be the judge of that.

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Godspeed, Mathias