Enhancing CRO by implementing an always visible mobile search bar

What is CRO?

Simply put, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of improving user experience to increase sales. There are many strategies, best practices and other elements to consider to increase the CRO of an e-commerce site.

Search and CRO

Improving search functionality is one proven way to boost your CRO. It’s critical for customers who know what they want. But e-commerce sites often provide customers with poor UI, irrelevant and inelastic results, which leads, inevitably, to lost sales. 

Poor search UI is particularly an issue for mobile users. In 2022, 56% of online purchases were made by smartphones. So having a smart, intuitive mobile design has never been so important for CRO. 

Hypothesis: Visible Mobile Search Bar

Whilst mobile versions of modern e-commerce stores often look great and are, for the most part, intuitive, they’re often hiding the search bar, which we believe could negatively impact their CRO.

We implemented an always visible search bar to increase conversion rate for our client Sola Wood Flowers.

Implementation

The implementation was straightforward: we added a simple, visible search bar to the header and included helpful text in the search box itself.

Sidenote: as you can see, the search functionality clearly displays relevant items as customers type in the search bar which would help customers find items they are looking for. When customers click the search bar, popular items are displayed, making it easier for them to find what they’re looking for.

Following the implementation, we found interesting results.

Results

Once the sidebar update was live, almost immediately our client noticed a fairly sizable increase in conversions.

Overall, there was a significant increase in the search bar usage and revenue after implementation of mobile search bar.

• Search bar usage increased from 4 – 6 % (50% increase)
• Search bar revenue increased from 20 – 30 % (50% increase)

We can see all the improvement is driven from mobile (over 60% lift off mobile). 

It was clear that there was a correlation between search revenue and search revenue.