5 Reasons to Choose Faceted Search -- Now

Faceted Search is the Future

This is what your site will look like without faceted search. Faceted search is the future of e-commerce. Faceted search organizes information in a way that allows users to filter by feature, and easily find products with the components they desire most. Many major online retailers are rolling out faceted search on their e-commerce sites; soon, e-commerce sites without faceted search will go the way of drive-in movie theaters and roller-skating carhops.
You are probably thinking that faceted search is something you will need to implement at some point down the road -- but we think you should consider implementing it now. Here are five reasons why.

1. All the cool kids are doing it. Best Buy. Amazon. Google Shopping. What do they all have in common? They use faceted search. You can't play in the majors without a major league uniform; you may be a leader in your industry but if you don't have faceted search on your site, no one will recognize  your All-Star status.

2. Stay ahead of the curve. Eventually, e-commerce sites will all have faceted search. Your choice is to do it when everyone else does, or to do it now, before the tipping point happens. Why now? Because by integrating faceted search now, customers will have a better online experience on your site now. By the time your competitors opt for faceted search, your customers will have long enjoyed searching and buying on your site. You will come out ahead -- far ahead.

3. Your products are complex. If you sold, say, a line of one-size-fits-all novelty aprons, you probably wouldn't need faceted search. A listing and a photo of each apron would probably suffice. However, if you sold aprons for every holiday in a broad range of sizes and styles (rickrack aprons, glitter aprons, googly-eye aprons and so on) you would need faceted search to help your customer find the large, rickrack Christmas apron she's been looking for. Instead of spending hours searching, she finds it in seconds by applying the filters for size, style and holiday. Faceted search makes things easier for customers -- why would you wait to do that?

4. You need to shake things up. Best Buy took a hit when shoppers shifted away from big box stores and began buying electronics online. Many of their stores closed. They needed a way to make up the ground they'd lost. One of their strategies was to integrate faceted search into Bestbuy.com. Now, customers can find the laptop they want by selecting the exact features they are looking for. If your business has been struggling or if your sales have been disappointing, faceted search might just be what it takes to turn things around.

5. It's what's best for your clients. That's really the bottom line, isn't it? If you want to do what's best for your clients, don't wait. There's really no reason to wait. The future is multi-faceted -- and your e-commerce site should be too! 

If you want to learn more about faceted search, contact Ecreative.

Photo credit: Patrick Feller / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)