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Curious about how important site search is for e-commerce? Look no further. We compiled some of the most interesting and important statistics about site search, and its direct or indirect impact on critical e-commerce KPIs.

Without further ado…

Site search: the door to your e-commerce property

An estimated 5.5B people are online in 2024 (68% of the global population). In the U.S., 56% of consumers start online shopping searches on Amazon, ahead of search engines (42%) and Walmart (29%).

Of those, 69% say the search function is the most common way they find products on retail websites.

When shoppers feel they had a successful onsite search, 92% purchase the item they searched for—and 78% buy at least one additional item (average 3 additional items).

34% of users tried to search for non-product content.

On retail sites, shoppers say search is a primary way they shop: 69% use the search function to find products.

39% of purchasers are influenced by a relevant search.

After an unsuccessful onsite search, around 8 in 10 shoppers agree they’re more likely to leave and buy elsewhere (U.S. 81%; global 80%). A whopping 82% (U.S.) say they avoid websites where they’ve experienced search difficulties in the past.

Search problems hit loyalty: 77% of U.S. consumers avoid websites where they’ve had search difficulties.

20% of people who used search went on to refine their searches (submit another search) and 21% exited the website from the search results.

Baymard’s 2024 benchmark found 41% of ecommerce sites fail to fully support key search query types shoppers use.

72% of sites completely fail site search expectations.

Clearly, we need better, smarter ecommerce search.

When done right, site search makes conversion rates soar

When search works, it drives revenue through both conversion and basket-building: 92% purchase the searched item and 78% add at least one more item after a successful search.

Amazon’s conversion rate shoots up 6x when visitors do a search (2% → 12%). Walmart’s 1.1% conversion rate goes to 2.9% with a search, a 2.4x boost. For Etsy, site search boosts conversions at 3x.

Conversion rates through site search can be up to 50% higher than the average.

Desktop conversion rates are 2x higher for retailers with advanced search vs. basic search capabilities.

Case studies have shown increased conversion rates of 43% from site search optimization.

[Search] visitors converted at 4.63% versus the websites’ average of 2.77%, which is 1.8 times more effective. 

50% of retailers said that they saw an increase in revenue as a direct result of site search technology. (and that was dramatically higher at 93% for companies with advanced site search).

Autocomplete can boost sales and conversions by as much as 24%

On some sites, searchers account for roughly 40% of total revenue.

See how Lacoste increased their conversion rates by 37% using site search

Top KPIs for e-commerce search

53% of retailers with advanced search capabilities have defined KPIs for site search versus only 13% of those with basic site search.

In 2018, KPIs impacted most by site search were revenue per visit (52.4%), time on site after search (51.5%), and highest bounce searches (39.8%).

Most common site search KPIs in 2020 are: conversion rate from search, click-through rate from search terms, and eliminating searches that return zero results.

Top 3 functions that own site search — marketing, product, omnichannel — should take note. 60% of advanced search companies give these functions tools to manage and optimize site search without IT.

Bonus: 5 Actionable Analytics Reports for Internal Site Search

Personalization and e-commerce search

59% of online shoppers believe it is easier to find more interesting products on personalized retail stores.

When personalization and proprietary customer data are integrated, revenue increases by 6% to 10%.

48% of consumers spend more when their experience is personalized.

59% of customers say tailored engagement based on past interactions is very important to winning their business.

Personalization, relevance, and filtering/faceting were top 3 site search features with biggest benefits for business. 

51% of consumers say they are more likely to make a purchase from a brand if the content is personalized.

See how Decathlon saw a 50% increase in conversion rate for personalized search queries.

Mobile e-commerce search

In “I-want-to-buy” moments, most used device is mobile at 65%.

Mobile app shoppers spend 20x more time shopping than website users.

In the 2024 holiday season (Nov 1–Dec 31), mobile drove $132B—54.5% of online revenue. Adobe also reported mobile at 51.4% of online spend in October 2025.

Better UX increased mobile contribution to sales by 50% for Cdiscount.

Better UX increased mobile traffic by 20% and mobile revenue by 80% for ClubMed.

GenAI is becoming a real shopping/referral channel

According to McKinsey, "Gen AI is poised to unlock between $240B and $390B in economic value for retailers,” equivalent to a 1.2–1.9 percentage point margin increase across the industry.

But... McKinsey also notes that in its survey of 50+ retail executives, only two said they’ve successfully implemented gen AI across their organizations.

And yet... in another survey by Algolia, 61% of respondents say they plan to implement agentic AI this year.

Retailers will still want to build their own agentic solutions. Bain found that ~50% of consumers are cautious about letting AI agents handle purchases end-to-end.

64% of survey respondents said AI is important to their search strategy; generative AI is associated with better product comparisons (51%) and improved buyer's guides (46%) and 52% plan to implement AI tools to help their merchandising teams. 

During the 2024 holiday season, Adobe observed traffic to retail sites from generative AI sources up 13x YoY (Cyber Monday up 19x).

In Oct 2025, Adobe reported generative AI traffic up 1,200% YoY, and shoppers arriving from AI sources were 16% more likely to convert than non-AI traffic sources.

The takeaway

Despite conversion potential, only 15% of companies have dedicated resources to optimizing site search, and only 7% of companies report learning from site search data and using that data in other areas of their business.

But those are also the companies with dramatically better KPIs.

The key takeaways: set your site search KPIs, start measuring your site search analytics, and allocate your investments accordingly.