If you are like most ecommerce teams, your on-site search is treated like plumbing. As long as it returns something and does not crash, it quietly stays off the roadmap.
Yet that small box at the top of your site is one of the highest intent, highest margin levers you have.
Industry studies repeatedly show that:
- Industry studies repeatedly show that a significant share of visitors, around 20 to 30 percent, actively use on-site search.
- Those visitors often generate 40 percent or more of total revenue and convert 2 to 3 times better than non searchers (for example, data aggregated by Opensend)
- Orders that start with a search often carry 25 to 50 percent higher average order value, according to analyses from agencies like Groove Commerce
When you combine higher conversion with higher AOV, it is completely realistic for better search relevance and merchandising to add 10 to 30 percent to total revenue over time. Some benchmarks, such as those shared by Prefixbox, even report conversion uplifts in the 15 to 50 percent range and revenue increases above 40 percent once search is properly optimized.
So why is search ignored, and how do you turn it into a revenue engine instead of a line item in your hosting bill?
Let us dig in.
Why on-site search is still ignored
Despite its impact, search often falls between the cracks inside ecommerce teams.
1. No one clearly owns it
Is search a technology responsibility? UX? Merchandising? Marketing?
Because it cuts across all these domains, it is easy for search to sit in a gray zone with no dedicated owner. If everyone owns it a little bit, no one owns it enough to move the metrics.
2. It looks fine at a glance
Someone types a product name, sees results, and mentally checks the box:
“Search works.”
What they usually do not see:
- Queries that return zero results
- Brand or campaign searches that lead to random products
- Customers who quietly bounce after one frustrating query
From the outside, it works. From the inside, it is leaking revenue.
3. It is seen as infrastructure, not a trading lever
Most search tools are bought as part of a platform or as a technical add-on. The mindset becomes:
“We have a search engine.”
Instead of:
“We have a revenue engine inside search that needs trading and tuning every week.”
As a result, search is rarely part of campaign planning, AOV strategy, or margin management. It sits in the background while acquisition channels get the attention.
4. The data is there, but not surfaced
Search terms, click-through rate, add-to-cart rate, margin by query, revenue per search session. All of this is incredibly valuable.
But in many teams, these metrics:
- Sit buried in raw logs
- Live in default analytics views that no one monitors
- Are not tied back to business KPIs
If no one is looking at the numbers, it is hard to argue for investment or prove the upside.
Why searchers are your most valuable shoppers
Think of on-site search as a direct line into shopper intent.
A visitor who types:
“nike black running tights size m”
is:
- Past the inspiration and browsing stage
- Clear on product type, brand, color, and size
- Basically raising their hand to say “show me the thing I want so I can pay you”
This is completely different from a casual browser who is paging through a category out of curiosity.
That is why:
- Searchers are often 2 to 3 times more likely to convert than non searchers, according to data aggregated by Opensend
- In some benchmarks, search users are 3 to 5 times more likely to convert, and their AOV is 25 to 50 percent higher, as agencies such as Groove Commerce report
Now imagine what happens if you:
- Show highly relevant products first
- Promote profitable or campaign SKUs inside those results
- Reduce friction with typo tolerance, synonyms, and smarter filters
You are not just capturing intent.
You are shaping it.
Even without a huge replatform, teams that take ownership of search and treat it as a core buying journey often see that the “search segment” starts to outperform every acquisition channel on a revenue per session basis.
Where SearchLayer fits in
At SearchLayer we built our platform around exactly this idea: turn on-site search into a revenue engine, not a background feature.
That includes:
- Relevance features such as natural language search, typo tolerance, synonyms, boosters, and attribute aware ranking
- Merchandising controls so your team can pin, promote, and schedule SKUs or collections by query, segment, or campaign, without waiting on developers
- Analytics and insights that show you what people search for and how that translates into clicks, adds to cart, margin, and revenue
Everything is hosted in the EU with infrastructure physically located in the Netherlands, so European merchants can optimize search without compromising on latency or data residency.
If you want to explore how a focused search strategy could drive 10 to 30 percent more revenue for your store, start by looking at your own search data. Once you see how much of your revenue already flows through that small box at the top of the page, it will stop feeling like a cost center and start looking like your next big growth lever.
Ready to talk about your on-site search?
Send us a message and we will be happy to explore ideas specific to your store: https://searchlayer.tech/contact
