These young consumers have already started to make their mark on the world: If you have kids, how much influence do they have on your shopping selection compared to what you may have had yourself as a kid? I bet you heard a lot of “no.” Today, thanks to some research from Paramount, we know that nine in 10 household purchases across categories are influenced by Gen Alpha, who also now represent 15% of the total U.S. population. This is a generation that will expect search results at retailer sites to be much more enhanced in quality and personalization—changing the way a brand may lay out and augment its content online and in physical store displays.
As such, we need to rethink how a shopper’s online and offline journeys overlap with one another. Search results can and should go beyond a page of links or images and be more helpful, suggestive and concierge-like to enable shoppers to discover the best result for them in that moment. It should be a balance of inspiration and curation.
Recent evolutions in product search results
Long a leader in innovation, Amazon has rolled out a few noteworthy updates to its standard search functionality over the past year.
Amazon Lens, found in the search bar, now allows the shopper to search by image and includes the ability to add text to qualify that visual search. Not to be outdone, the View in Your Room feature has been expanded to include augmented reality, placing the item you’re researching onto your table or countertop—consider how personalized and visual this new way of searching compares to just a few years ago. An enhanced More Like This icon brings up a subscreen of additional recommendations for when the result is close but doesn’t quite hit the mark of what the consumer is looking for.
My favorite upgrade, still in the testing phase, lists variations of the same product (such as color differentiation) in the search results. The world of showing only one product, the hero variant, in the search result is about to become history, and I, like many, won’t miss that narrow view.
Instacart was early in the game with search enhancements like AI-powered results with their Ask Instacart feature. Queries on Instacart can be as broad as, “What should I make for dinner?” to narrower questions like, “What vegetables are the best to roast?” or my go-to, “What are good snacks for picky kids?”