For every second of delay a user experiences while waiting for products to come back in search, they do not make a purchase or never come back. Speed is not just a usability feature but rather a key factor to success in eCommerce and on every website’s search engine. When users have more quickly available to view what they were searching for there is a greater chance they will remain engaged and ultimately purchase.

The Autocomplete Impact Calculator shows the amount of total revenue you have missed from your site due to poor search optimization and what potential returns you can see..

Why Speed Directly Impacts Revenue

There are numerous research studies showing speed has a huge effect on conversion rates. One such study was designed by Google that states for every additional second it took to load a page, conversions dropped by 20%. Another example is data from Amazon stating for every 100 milliseconds of additional delay users can expect to see a drop in revenues due to their delay in finding a product while searching.

Now let us include the effects of these two previous studies to predict how the delay in retrieving search results may affect you as an eCommerce business. Every time someone types a query into a search bar, the amount of time it takes to get relevant search results back has a direct impact on whether that user is going to continue searching for other products, or stop searching altogether. Users become frustrated when they do not receive timely responses to their product queries, and when that happens, they typically abandon search altogether.

Users become frustrated when they spend too long trying to find products through search and will abandon that search process after repeated difficulties. Autocomplete allows you to assist with this process by predicting (via real-time) what their text will produce in terms of results before they actually complete their query.

What the Autocomplete Impact Calculator Measures

The Autocomplete Impact Calculator serves to help find out how much faster searching will be, and how this relates to your business. The calculator is designed around three basic but very important pieces of information.

The first is the average time it takes for a consumer to search for a product on your website, which indicates your current search effectiveness rate. The second is how much faster a consumer will be able to find results once autocomplete is turned on. And lastly, conversion sensitivity, which indicates how much impact converting to a faster search will have on your conversion rate.

Using these measures, the Autocomplete Impact Calculator can give business users information about how much engagement with their web site will increase, and how much their conversion rate can increase.

🚀 Measure the real impact of search speed

See how much revenue you’re losing without autocomplete

With ExpertRec, you can implement intelligent autocomplete, reduce search time instantly, and directly improve engagement and conversions — all without complex setup.

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Quick setup • No coding • Instant impact

The Cost of Inefficient Searches

Today’s consumers want instant gratification. In a study done by the Nielsen Norman group, they found that 25% of consumers will abandon a task if they cannot get moving within a few seconds.

This means that inefficiencies in searching or poor-performing searches will gradually lead to lost revenue. Visitors do not complain – they just leave.

The true value of the autocomplete function is that it takes away time delays between users’ intentions and being able to find desired products. Autocomplete allows consumers to be on the path to receiving their products much faster by providing them with predictive suggestions, thereby allowing them to avoid typing in an entire query, correcting errors made through typing, and not evenly having to search through irrelevant listings.

How Autocomplete Drives Engagement

Enhancing User Experience & Trust Through Improved Search. The initial benefit of enhanced search functionality is improved user interaction. Users searches faster which in turn allow them to view more items/click more items and spend more time with your brand.

The feeling of being connected to your website through increased Autocomplete functionality improves perceptions of responsiveness and trust with your brand. Users perceive a connection or an understanding with your site through Autocomplete features and therefore will likely continue to engage with what they perceive to be an intelligent and supportive system.

As engagement increases over time, this leads to more product views, greater add-to-cart rates and ultimately greater conversion rates.

From Engagement to Conversion Uplift

The key to building this value is finding the relationship between improved engagement and revenue.

As the speed of search increases it reduces the complexity of decision making. Users are not confused and/or overwhelmed with choices and are able to flow from search to product selection to checkout seamlessly.

Industry benchmarks indicate that there can be an improvement in conversion rates of 10% to 30% from enhanced search functionality based on baseline performance of the search functionality. Although the actual performance will vary, improved search will lead to improved business results again and again.

🎯 Reality Check Quiz

Why This Matters for Expertrec

This is where Expertrec separates itself from the competition. Instead of a generic search solution, Expertrec provides auto complete that has intelligent understanding of user intent, handles common misspellings and delivers fast relevant results. In this regard, the Autocomplete Impact Calculator is a strategic tool; not simply a demo of features.

It helps businesses quantify the return on investment (ROI) of implementing smarter search capabilities. The question of whether to invest in an auto complete solution becomes a question of how much revenue is being lost by not doing so.

Making the Business Case

Many businesses are hesitant to invest in search optimization because the outcome is typically not evidently quantifiable. This makes the uncertainty difficult to assess. However, by utilizing the calculator, you will have an accurate way to demonstrate how much faster an organization can become if they implement search optimization (through the use of the calculator) and subsequently exhibits a profound ROI for ongoing investment in search optimization.

The Calculator demonstrates the ROI of Technical Improvements according to Projected Revenue Targets, thus allowing you to present an understandable, clearly defined ROI/Investment Case for all Business Stakeholders.

The Bottom Line

Speed is now a necessity and expected throughout e-commerce. Behaviour will be driven by expectations, and e-commerce has proven that expectations affect how long a customer is willing to wait for search results.

Autocomplete via dropdown options is the easiest way to remove friction from purchase decision-making and can, when used in conjunction with the calculator, provide clear evidence and support as a concrete means of enhancing the user experience while achieving measurable growth. The message from this case is simple: the faster a user can find what they’re looking for, the faster they will purchase, and, in turn, the faster an organization will grow.