<b>The report no one opened</b>

<b>The report no one opened</b>

A mid-size retailer had a site-search report sitting untouched in their analytics for two years. Conversion was flat and they assumed the catalog was the problem.

The clue was in that ignored report: the top internal search term, by a wide margin, was a product line they <i>did</i> sell — but listed under a different name. Searchers got a zero-results page and left. Roughly 4,300 of those dead searches a month.

They added the common name as a synonym and built one landing page around it.

Conversion rate for visitors who used search rose from 1.9% to 6.1%, because those people had high intent and were simply hitting a wall. That single synonym mapped to about $31,000 in recovered quarterly revenue.

The lesson: your internal search log is a list of exactly what customers want, in their own words. Read it before you blame the catalog.