Banking and finance websites must not only offer a wide range of products and services but also ensure that these offerings are easily accessible to their users. An internal search engine can help you achieve this.
However, simply adding a search bar to your website doesn’t guarantee that users will find what they need. Without proper site search optimization, even the most advanced tools can fall short, leaving customers frustrated.
In this guide, we’ll explore the key strategies for finetuning your internal search engine for banking and finance websites, ensuring that customers find the right information quickly and accurately.
1. Use Synonyms for Financial Terminology
Banking and finance websites deal with a wide range of products and services, often referred to by different names depending on the user’s background. For example, loans might also be referred to as “credit” or “financing.” An effective site search engine can recognize these synonyms, interpret them correctly, and return relevant information — eliminating no-hit searches (searches that don’t return any results).
AddSearch’s auto-synonyms feature lets you create groups of related keywords for specific search terms. When a website visitor searches for any of these keywords, they will return the same results.
However, it’s sometimes impossible to capture all the relevant synonyms for a particular keyword. That’s why AddSearch will also identify search queries that don’t return any results. It retrieves potential synonyms and automatically adds contextually relevant terms to your search database, capturing as many semantic similarities as possible.
Beyond that, you should also optimize your banking and financial site search engine for:
- Financial jargon: consider the different ways clients might search for services, especially in specific segments like investment or insurance. Search should account for both industry-specific terms and layman’s terms (e.g., “CD” for “certificate of deposit”).
- Product variations: if a bank has several types of credit cards, loans, or savings accounts, the search engine should be smart enough to guide users to the relevant options. For instance, if a customer types in “travel card,” the results should surface relevant credit cards that offer travel-related benefits.
2. Implement Faceted Search
Faceted search allows website visitors to apply product or category filters to their searches to refine results further and find the exact information they need quickly. It’s commonplace for e-commerce websites but can also benefit banking and financial services providers.
For example, a user might start their search with a broad query like “savings accounts.” They can then refine their search by selecting filters that matter most to them, such as an interest rate of 1.1-1.5%, a minimum balance of <$1000, and no monthly fees.
The faceted search system would display only the savings accounts that meet those specific criteria, making it easier for the user to find an account that suits their needs without having to sift through irrelevant options.
AddSearch supports faceted searches. You can add custom field filters for product categories, website sections, and so much more. Additionally, you can customize filters to appear as checkboxes, dropdowns, or tags, depending on your preferred user interface. You can also restrict your users’ search results to particular sections of your website.
3. Enhance Search with Search Suggestions and Auto-Complete
Implement search suggestions and auto-complete to speed up the search process on your banking and finance website and reduce spelling errors that may lead to no-hit searches.
As users begin typing, the search bar should suggest queries or popular results based on past searches or common terms. For example, if a user types “how to open,” auto-suggestions might include “how to open a savings account” or “how to open a credit card account. They can click on the relevant result instead of typing the query completely and potentially making errors.
AddSearch’s predictive search engine lets you autocomplete search results to help customers find information quickly. It also provides related results relevant to the query that the customer may not have thought of initially.
Learn more: What is predictive search?
4. Optimize for Error Tolerance
One in ten search queries are misspelled on Google. Now, your internal search engine might not be Google, but we’ll wager that spelling errors are bound to happen for various reasons — maybe the customer isn’t familiar with the term or in a hurry. Whatever the case, they expect to find the right information, and quickly too.
AddSearch supports typo correction and fuzzy matching, allowing you to optimize your site search engine for error tolerance. Specifically, you’ll be able to:
- Integrate tolerance for common misspellings (e.g., “morgage” instead of “mortgage”) and homophones to guide users toward correct results even when their spelling isn’t perfect.
- Ensure the search can return relevant results even when there’s a slight variation in how a user phrases a query. For instance, a user searching for “bank with highest savings interest” should still find information about “best high-interest savings accounts.”
5. Optimize for Mobile Search
Nearly 60% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices. Your site search engine must be optimized to deliver the same experience whether customers are searching on a desktop or smartphone.
Here are a few ways to achieve this:
- Mobile-first design: Your site search interface should be designed for small screens, with easy-to-tap buttons and concise results that don’t require excessive scrolling. Consider implementing a mobile-first approach where search results are clean and easy to navigate.
- Voice search capabilities: With the rise of mobile voice assistants, it’s becoming increasingly important to offer search features that cater to voice queries. This is especially useful for banking customers who may search using natural language (e.g., “find the nearest ATM” or “how much is my mortgage payment”).
- Speed optimization: Mobile users expect rapid search responses. Ensure that your search engine is optimized for speed, especially on mobile networks that may have connectivity issues. Long load times can lead to user frustration and abandonment.
- Context-aware mobile search: If your app or site can access location services, contextualize the search results based on the user’s location. For example, a search for “nearest ATM” should prioritize results based on their current GPS location.
- Search integration with mobile banking apps: For customers using mobile banking apps, make sure search is tightly integrated with app functionalities. Queries like “check account balance” or “transfer money” should directly trigger the relevant in-app features.
6. Provide content recommendations
Content recommendations help users discover relevant information or products without necessarily searching for them. It’s also a good way to surface specific content for marketing purposes.
For example, AddSearch’s content recommendation engine lets you display frequently bought together products to boost cross-selling and upselling. Let’s say that people who search for loans are often also looking for financial advice. With AddSearch Recommend, you’ll be able to recommend financial consultations to customers viewing loans and vice versa — creating cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
7. Prioritize Security and Compliance
In the highly regulated financial sector, ensuring security and compliance is not optional; it’s essential. Your site search engine must be designed to respect user privacy and not display any sensitive or personal account information in search results.
Beyond that, it should also comply with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), offering the highest level of protection for any information customers might share in the course of their search.
As an AddSearch user, you’ll enjoy the highest level of data security and protection. Our advanced site search solution is SOC 2 certified and also offers end-to-end data encryption. Check out the full list of AddSearch security features to learn more about how we protect your data and customer information.
Speed Up Site Search Optimization With AddSearch
AddSearch makes it easy to implement site search optimization for your banking and finance website. It provides an advanced internal search engine with features like faceted search, auto-completes, and synonyms — helping you to deliver a seamless search experience to your customers.
Want to test things for yourself? Try AddSearch for free for 14 days.
