Capturing Intent

Like most e-tailers, overstock.com suffers from the 3% conversion infection.  I don’t actually know their conversion rate but let’s just go with the industry-standard here.

We know everything about the 3% that transacted but very little about the 97% that didn’t.  Yes, we could study their click trails but that’s indirect evidence.

Overstock’s solution- A big, prominent, inviting search box:

Now I don’t have access to their metrics but am willing to bet an impressive number use the search box.  This might not improve conversion rates directly but now Overstock knows what a vast majority of visitors came looking for.  They’ve extracted intent.  Intent is not as valuable as a sale but definitely more valuable than $0.

Related article: Discovering New Categories