More people are flocking online to get their shopping done these days. But, an online shopper doesn’t necessarily equal genius website navigator. You need to ensure that your business website’s search tools are simple and intuitive for those who are less technologically inclined — or risk losing customers.

About 60% of online purchases result from a customer search, according to ecommerce design solution Volusion. Not only should you do everything you can to land your business in the search engine sweet spot, but you should also optimize your in-site search for convenient user navigation.

The following tips will help improve your ecommerce company’s search functionality, both on-site and via organic search.

1. Navigation Bars and Filters

Usability studies indicate that a user’s eye naturally progresses from left to right; therefore, place navigation bars to the left. Also, you’ll probably have more room for detail if the navigation bar runs down the left side of the screen.

From there, you may choose to expand navigation bars into drop-down boxes that display sub-categories. For instance, a navigation heading displaying “Automotive” might expand into subcategories that include “Carburetors” and “Transmissions.” Just be sure not to get too specific (e.g. “Bi-Xenon Headlamps”) or else the user could become overwhelmed and discouraged.

Once the user has moved beyond the navigation, he will be taken to a page full of products. Provide a filter option that allows him to narrow products further — by price, color, fabric, most recent, etc.

In addition to pairing products with colorful, high-resolution photos, make sure to include unique, intriguing product descriptions. Not only will the shopper be more intrigued to click through to the main product page, but Google is more likely to prioritize unique product descriptions versus unoriginal content.

Cross-link between product pages and categories. That way, the shopper will more easily find related products, all while spending more time on your site and lowering your bounce rate. Cross-linking is one of the most effective search methods for ecommerce customers, especially those browsing without a clear purchase in mind.

2. In-Site Search Box

If your site has a larger population of product pages, a search box can help with targeted navigation. Follow TasteBook‘s example and consider including brief search hints like “keyword,” “ingredient,” “fabric” or “sport.” Depending on the effectiveness of the tool, the search should bring the shopper to page full of corresponding products.

However, you still want to entice users on a mission to explore the site. Consider a floating sidebar of most popular products or categories that follows a shopper throughout her search or a feed of sales activity, like Fab.com’s social shopping page. And an ecommerce homepage should constantly cycle through featured products, sales and curated content so that repeat customers are more enticed to explore.

3. Organic Search

Speaking of homepages, Google will crawl the pages of a website that have the most SEO juice, which is usually the homepage. Therefore, the pages that you link to your homepage should be the most important. Keep in mind that these pages might not necessarily reflect the categories on your navigation bar. Give prominence to other highly-clicked pages like the “About” page, for instance — they’re more likely to be indexed by Google.

Be sure to index all of your main pages, category pages and even specific product pages. Use Google Webmaster Tools and Webmaster Central to learn how to effectively index pages, then track how users searched for and found those pages. You can even view the ratio of your total URLs compared to how many have appeared in Google’s web index.

In order to maximize SEO, be sure to attach strategic keywords (including long-tail keywords) to your site pages. Use Google’s free Keyword Tool to estimate the traffic you can expect from certain key words and phrases.

Finally, be sure to index user reviews as well — Google favors fresh, user-generated content. For this reason, you may also choose to invite curators to regularly contribute related content to your website, which will not only improve SEO, but will also add a community element to your business.

How does your website design and optimize its search features? Which are the most easily navigable ecommerce sites out there today? Let us know in the comments.

The Future of Search Series is supported by SES New York Conference and Expo, connecting the digital dots between search, social and commerce. The SES New York Conference and Expo takes a critical look at the latest developments to help marketers traverse the quickly developing landscape, with a special focus on the latest digital marketing trends and the latest technology launches from Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. Register with MASH20 and Save 20%. Join the discussion #SESConf.

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For years, advertisers have run their search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) programs separately. The SEM team would focus on bidding, campaign analytics and the complex science of managing millions of keyword buys to drive maximum conversion. The SEO team lived in a world of internal and external linking, and optimizing pages to maximize reach and relevance in organic search engine results.

But today, more marketers are realizing SEM and SEO are not separate disciplines. Instead, they are two sides of the same coin — complementary programs that, when managed correctly, can benefit each other to increase conversion rates and share of voice. Insights gained when buying pay per click (PPC) keyword ads can positively impact SEO creative initiatives, while natural search queries and clickpath data can, and should, influence keyword bidding.

But how do you more closely integrate the “bid kids” with the “white hats”? How can SEM and SEO teams work together to improve results on their respective programs, increase return on search marketing investment and drive a lasting lift in conversion across the board?

Here are three practical steps every marketer can take to begin this integration.

1. Identify Overlap

The first step in combining SEO and SEM programs is to identify where the programs overlap, where they don’t and where they should. Paid search advertising programs cannot be successful without top-ranking natural search results and vice versa, so you need to use your search management platform or web analytics tools to identify which keywords are performing well on both sides of the table, and see which ones are “lone wolves” driving only PPC or organic search traffic.

When SEO and SEM teams are operating independently, there are often high-volume keyword terms that drive traffic from only one of the two search channels, either paid search or natural search. When you find these terms, you can better optimize them. For example, if you have a term for which traffic is only driven through paid search clicks, there is opportunity to focus SEO efforts on obtaining organic ranking on these terms. Conversely, if your organization is generating revenue from organic search terms that don’t match any of the keywords in your paid search program, there is probably some incremental revenue you can capture with paid keyword expansion.

It would be impossible to compare organic and paid search coverage on each of the millions of search terms that are driving traffic to your site with even the best analytics tools. As with all analysis on large data sets, it is important to take a management-by-exception approach. Start by identifying the high-volume and top-converting search queries in each channel. Once you have filtered to find the most impactful search queries, the next step is to evaluate how they perform.

2. Measure the Paid Click Percentage

Measuring the click-share of each channel is a better way to find coverage holes and overlap than trying to compare the number of impressions, clicks and conversions that each channel is driving. Depending on the type of tracking system you use, there are a variety of ways to get this metric. To keep it generic: Match raw query search terms across paid and organic results, sum the total clicks, then calculate the paid clicks as a percentage of that total.

This single metric, called “Paid Click Percentage,” makes it easy for advertisers to quickly identify holes in either paid or organic search coverage. For example, you can look at paid click percentages greater than 75% to quickly identify key revenue-driving terms for your paid search program that are receiving fewer clicks from organic search results. Because searchers are more inclined to click on organic results instead of ads, you know that a term with zero organic clicks must not be resulting in first-page organic results.

Sorting these terms by paid search revenue impact will give the organic search team a ranked list of queries (and landing pages) to optimize against, allowing them to more efficiently prioritize SEO projects.

After you address this, you can use the same report to identify keywords that should be added or refined in your paid search campaigns.

3. Refine, Review, Repeat

When paid and organic search channels work together, marketers get maximum revenue from both programs. Identifying holes in paid and organic search campaigns using the method described above should help improve overall performance, but remember: It is not a one-time project.

Websites and advertising programs are continually changing. This analysis should be done on a regular basis. If your organization is large enough to have disparate paid and organic search teams, set up a regular meeting between both teams to ensure your SEM and SEO programs are friends, not distant relations.

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