Both sides index the same content. The left is strict (exact match, Enter to search, no rescue). The right is forgiving (autosuggest, synonyms, typo tolerance, smart ranking). Try the task on both and compare your time and retries below.
Searchers convert more
Visitors who use site search are 2-3x more likely to buy and spend up to 2.6x more per session. Up to 30% of visitors use search, so even small lifts matter.
Bad search loses revenue
Search abandonment is costly. Estimates put the loss at about $300B per year in the U.S. After a poor search, many shoppers leave or do not return. Some jump straight to a competitor.
Common failure modes
Large studies find that 31% of product finding tasks fail when search is strict. Around 70% of sites cannot handle synonyms and about a third fail on simple typos. Nearly half do not help users recover from a zero results page.
What fixes help
Autosuggest, typo tolerance, and synonyms reduce retries and speed success. In controlled reports, autocomplete alone has lifted sales by about 24%.
What to measure
Time to first result, time to click, reformulations per task, zero result rate, suggestion usage, and success rate. These match the metrics in this demo.
Key takeaway
Make search forgiving and helpful. If people can succeed without a perfect query they buy faster and bounce less.