When looking specifically at organizations who haven’t made testing a priority yet, budget emerges as a major challenge for 53% of the respondents. This is followed closely by knowing how to test effectively, with half of those companies saying that this is very challenging.

How challenging are the following when it comes to testing? (All respondents)

The Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey, with analysis carried out by Econsultancy, received global responses from more than 1,800 digital marketers across North America, Europe and Asia.

It explores the key areas in which digital marketers need to excel to ensure success, including mobile, social, personalization and customer experience.

Testing site search

Site search is an increasingly important aspect of ecommerce as ease of navigation and the ability to find products has a huge impact on the user experience.

The report suggests that a primary issue for marketers is ignorance – more than half are unaware of the impact of site search techniques beyond the baseline functionality of keyword matching.

When looking at the effectiveness of techniques by region, European respondents emerged as least likely to say their on-site search is “very effective” based on high-converting items (26%) and top-rated content or products (16%).

With modest traffic figures on most sites, site search isn’t a priority, but there are reasons to believe that optimization of site search can have a significant impact today and a growing one over time.

For example, mobile is changing the way people navigate websites and certain multiword searches might be important for driving higher conversion rates.

How effective is your site search based on the following?