3 Reasons Why Every Business Should Incorporate Autosuggest into Their Software
In the world of software, speed and efficiency are key. The faster and easier a user can navigate your application, the more attractive it will be to that person. Autosuggest is one of the best ways to increase speed and efficiency in your app, allowing users to find what they’re looking for quickly.
Here are three reasons why businesses should incorporate autosuggest into their software.
Why Software Should Incorporate Autosuggest
1. Autosuggest can help strengthen User Experience (UX)
Today’s consumers are used to quick and accurate results. They expect their searches to be intuitive without sifting through irrelevant information or results pages. Autosuggest can give your software a significant UX advantage by providing speedy and accurate results for users’ searches. Since this feature works in real-time, it also helps users avoid typos, saving them time and frustration.
2. Increase Stickiness, Retention, and Repeat Usage
Users avoid using software they don’t like or find challenging to use. Autosuggest makes finding answers faster and easier, so users will continue to return to the software. This can significantly benefit SaaS companies that rely on repeat user engagement to increase customer lifetime value (LTV). The stickier your site is, the lower your churn rate will be.
3. Increase Leads and Purchases
A practical auto-suggest feature can offer a better user experience and an easy path to conversion. Your online store will see more visitors convert into paying customers by making it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. This is especially true when you use rich results in your autosuggest dropdown (autocomplete). Apart from this, suggestion box software is yet another powerful tools that helps businesses to collect and manage ideas from both internal teams and external stakeholders. It provides collaboration features, idea evaluation tools, and customizable workflows to streamline the suggestion process and gather valuable marketing insights.
Best Practices for Autocomplete
1. Set Up Key Commands
The best way to optimize an auto-complete feature is to have a few keyboard commands that allow users to move through the search bar and select their options. These key commands can include pressing enter or the up/down arrow keys.
2. Response Time
One of the essential features of an autocomplete system is quick response time. If someone uses an autocomplete system, they expect to type in a few letters and immediately see relevant results without waiting to load.
3. Accurate Search Results
Another thing to keep in mind with autocomplete systems is that you want to provide accurate search results. You don’t want users searching for something completely unrelated, or you could lose them as customers. For example, if someone is searching for “shoes,” you might provide suggestions like “shoes on sale” or “women’s shoes” but not “socks” or “shoe polish,” which are entirely unrelated searches. This suggestion could annoy or confuse your users and drive them away from your site.
4. Typo-tolerance
The first consideration is how tolerant you want the system to be of misspellings. Visitors need to find what they’re looking for when they make a mistake, then set the autocomplete to take that into account. You can accomplish this by providing suggested searches that include the correct spelling of keywords and common misspellings.
5. Visual Hints
When users first type into the search box, give them visual hints about what they should expect. For example, you could show these categories above the auto-complete list if you sell products grouped by categories (e.g., books, movies, music).
6. Mobile Friendly
Your search needs to be as effective as possible to be responsive and mobile-friendly. Since most online searches are conducted on mobile devices, it’s essential to ensure that your software is. If you have mobile-friendly software, you will optimize your search results for that experience.
7. Limit the Number of Autocomplete Options
If your search engine returns a long list of auto-complete options, it can be overwhelming and hard to choose one. Or, it could look like there isn’t a way to get through all the options without scrolling down, which could encourage users to exit from the autocomplete dropdown box. Limiting the number of suggested phrases can ensure that only relevant suggestions.
Take Away
Customer experience should be a top priority for every company, and that means thinking of customer needs in terms of the services and products you offer. Making the customer’s journey easier, more pleasant, and faster is a great way to improve customer care and boost customer loyalty. Implementing auto-suggest technology is an easy way to do precisely this. It will enable your customers to quickly find what they are looking for, turning casual visitors into loyal customers.
