Published January 6, 2023

Test How Your Audience Searches and Level Up Product Findability

4 min read

Here’s a philosophical question for y’all: if a product is dropped on a website and no one notices, did it ever really exist?

If the products you build aren’t visible, you won’t see the impact you want to have on your audience. And that could have more dire consequences for your overall revenue. It could plummet faster than the Nasdaq on a bad trading day. And that’s “Danger, Will Robinson”!

You wouldn’t want to leave your audience lost in space, so to speak.

Robot swinging around flinging his arms with the text DANGER! on the frame, gif, grayscale

Your audience needs to find what they’re looking for as well as the product that matches their specific needs. If your new feature has negatively impacted that flow, then that’s something you can put to the test with Helio

You can test your current shopper flow or test one you’ve yet to implement. And ensure that your product description matches how your shoppers would search for it. 

But first, let’s first understand consumer behavior and how they come into play.  .

How to Improve Your Products’ Visibility

Consumer behavior has a deep impact on product findability, which is all about connecting with your target audience. There isn’t a one-size fits all approach. Every audience is different. What attracts one won’t attract another.

You want to reach the people most likely to use your product, and understand what drives their buying decisions.

A few tips on enhancing your product findability

  • Make it human centered. Once again, you’re looking to connect with your audience. And unless you’re marketing to the aliens who reside in the Beetleguese star system, that means humans.  
  • Make it stand out. Don’t be shy with your product. Put it out front and center. People like shiny things… so make it shine! 
  • Make it easy to find. Don’t hide it behind a complicated flow. If you’re gonna upfront your product, then you want it to be a mere click or two away.
  • Tailor it to your specific audience. You want your product description to match your audience’s needs. 

To do all that you’ll want to understand consumer psychology. Let’s take a look at a few of those psychological triggers you can leverage: 

  • Effort justification: Is the effort worth the reward? Effort justification is where we place more value on the outcome through sacrifice and suffering.  
  • Bandwagon effect: Create FOMO in your audience. We all want to be with the cool kids. So if everyone else is doing it, your audience will want to jump on the bandwagon
  • Achievement motivation: Unlock your audience’s desire to purchase by appealing to their need for a dopamine release.
  • Zeigarnik effect: Believe it or not, interruption can be a good motivator! We don’t like to leave things unfinished and that’s a good motivator to smash that buy button. 

For more Consumer Psychology check out our complete guide

Understand How Your Audience Prefers to Search 

Let’s break down the test we did for an eCommerce site, which allowed us to align the product with how their audience was searching for an item. 

The problem: how do they promote a new article of clothing that has attracted less attention than the team expected. 

The item we wanted to learn how an audience searched for so we could improve product findability.

Our Hunch 

Our instincts lead us to speculate that users would have trouble finding this item because it was listed as a coat. 

So, we wanted to know if users would search for a men’s coat when searching for one, using certain keywords, such as “coat” or “jacket”. Our target audience: all male, between the ages of 25-34. 

Our Signals

Helio report page on e-commerce site search and product findability.
Helio report page on e-commerce site search.

We asked what specific terms would participants search under to find a coat. Here’s what we found:

  • 35% of testers would use the search term “suit”
  • 33% of testers would use the search term “jacket”.
  • 18% of testers would use the search term “coat”
  • 17% of testers would use the search term “sport”.
  • 14% of testers would use the search term “blazer”
  • 18% of testers would use the search term(s) “grey/gray”.

Based on those signals, we determined that we should align the item’s labeling with participants’ expectations of finding a suit or jacket. This should improve the item’s findability on the site, and in turn revenue produced from the product.

Don’t Wait, Test Your Product Findability Today 

You can use Helio to reach your targeted audience and test your product findability Use an audience of your own or one of our Ready Made audiences, completely vetted for you! 

  • Beauty product consumers. This audience is made up of participants interested in beauty routines and self-care regimes who are either self-taught or attend cosmetology school. 
  • Active news consumer. These are folks who are news junkies, who read or watch the news on the daily. 
  • Mobile bank consumer. These are the people who do their banking mostly through their mobile devices, especially on a banking app. 

Those are just a sampling of the audiences we’ve carefully vetted and curated for your use. You can see all of them here

Once you have an audience you can get started immediately with this easy-to-use template.  

Product Browse Page Test

Optimize your product browsing experience to strengthen conversions, improve customer retention, and boost overall revenue.

Use this template for:

  • Product Design
  • Further understanding of customer motivations and preferences
  • Improve brand loyalty and reduce customer dissatisfaction
Use Template

Build something your users truly want