Prepopulated search bars can significantly boost online sales, says marketing study

Automatically prepopulating mobile app search bars with trending keywords increased purchase incidence by 10.4% and overall spending by 8.8% compared with an empty search bar. Prepopulating with personalized keywords reflecting users' recently browsed items raised purchase incidence by 21% and spending by 17%. Prepopulating with niche keywords unrelated to users' history produced little or no measurable effect. The experiment randomly assigned 72,587 consumers on a major Asian e-commerce platform to one of three treatment conditions or a control. Treatments displayed a prefilled trending category keyword, a personalized keyword from browsing history, or a niche product keyword; control showed an empty search bar.

"The study found that automatically prepopulating the search bar with trending keywords, such as popular product categories, increased purchase incidence by 10.4% and overall spending by 8.8% compared with an empty search bar. When the search bar was prepopulated with personalized keywords, reflecting items the user had recently browsed, purchase incidence rose by 21% and spending by 17%. Prepopulating with niche keywords, unrelated to the user's search history or patterns, had little to no measurable effect on consumer behavior."

"The research is based on a randomized field experiment involving 72,587 consumers on a major Asian e-commerce platform. Each user was randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions or a control group. In the treatment conditions, the platform's mobile app displayed a search bar that was prefilled with either a trending category keyword, a personalized keyword based on the user's browsing history, or a niche product keyword. The control group saw the default empty search bar."

"The study, titled "How Does Prepopulating Search Bars with Keywords Affect Online Consumer Behavior? A Field Experiment," was authored by Chenshuo Sun of the Business School of Renmin University of China. "Search bars are the starting point of most e-commerce journeys," said Sun. "The findings show that a simple change, pre-filling a search bar with relevant, trending, or personalized terms, can meaningfully influence what people discover and buy online.""

Read at Phys