It’s Monday, I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.
What are you looking for?
Somehow, almost always, I know exactly what I want to buy.
Navy blue fitted bedsheets, 1000 thread count, with stripes. An A-line maxi skirt with a slit, no buttons. Vegan protein bars, soya free, gluten free.
And the moment I land on a shopping website, there's one tiny element that becomes my instant best friend.
That little magnifying glass sitting quietly in the corner, waiting for me.
My most reliable shopping companion. Are you like me?
When you land on a shopping website, what do you do first?
I genuinely feel like it knows me better than most people do.
Turns out, I'm not alone. 69% of shoppers go straight to the search bar the moment they land on a site.
The search bar is the single highest-converting touchpoint.
It's Monday. Let's get into it.
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It started with Steve Jobs. Sort of.
In 1987, designer Keith Ohlfs created a magnifying-glass icon for the “Find” function in NeXTSTEP, the operating system developed at Steve Jobs’ company NeXT after he left Apple.
Ohlfs later explained that the icon was meant to evoke the idea of “finding a needle in a haystack.”
“…A magnifier would be more useful than say, a pair of binoculars, a librarian, or a telescope. — Keith Ohlfs
In the 2000s, Google standardized it for web search.
✅ Today, research shows users recognize the magnifying glass as a search tool even when there is no label at all.
The two ways people shop
Consumer psychology research identifies two distinct types of shopping behaviour. The first is exploratory browsing, where the customer has no particular goal. They're wandering. Happy to discover. Susceptible to impulse. The second is goal-directed search. Here they know exactly what they want.
The psychological shift between these two states tells us that:
People perform searches to reduce cognitive load, solve problems, and gain confidence before making a purchase.
The search isn't just a navigation tool. It's a cognitive relief mechanism.
The customer is offloading the work of finding onto your system, trusting it to respond with exactly what they need.
When the system responds well, that trust transfers to the product and the brand.
When it doesn't, when suppose zero results appear, or irrelevant products surface, 80% leave and 68% say they would not return to that website.
The search bar builds or destroys trust in one interaction.
Search one, Buy one more
After a successful search, 92% of shoppers purchase the item they searched for and 78% add at least one additional item, with an average of three extra products per order.
⚡ Amazon's conversion rate jumps from roughly 2% to 12%, a 6x lift, when a visitor uses site search.
Research on search intent psychology shows that queries fall into predictable categories — and each one signals a different stage in the purchase journey:
"moisturiser for dry skin": Informational. Still learning. Not ready to buy.
"Glossier moisturiser": Navigational. Brand awareness is there. Close.
"best moisturiser under £30": Commercial. Evaluating options. Very close.
"buy CeraVe moisturising cream": Transactional. Decision made. Just needs frictionless checkout.
Smart brands look at what customers search. Because that data shows you where people are in the journey, what language they use for your products, and crucially, where your catalogue is failing them.
Unfortunately, 72% of sites completely fail site search expectations.
Retailers lose an estimated $333 billion annually due to poor search experiences causing abandonment. Not bad products. Not bad prices. Bad search.
The Shark's secret weapon
Founded in a garage in Birmingham in 2012, Gymshark is now a $1.45 billion fitness apparel brand with 64 million customers worldwide.
The plateau
Gymshark's search had "big problems" with their search.
Best sellers were being buried. Out-of-stock products appeared at the top. US customers searching "sweatpants" got zero results, because in the UK the same product was called "joggers." Low search relevance was killing conversions.
The breakthrough
In 2018 they rebuilt their entire search experience, fixing relevance, preventing out-of-stock items from surfacing, adding AI synonyms across language nuances, and using personalised merchandising based on customer behaviour.
The gains
Search conversion rate went from 6.2% to over 10% in one year
Search was used in less than 10% of orders before the fix, on Black Friday 2020 it was used in more than 30% of orders
Revenue from search users up more than 400% year-on-year
AI merchandising alone drove an estimated extra £2 million per year in sales
Improving search, navigation, and merchandising together drove an estimated £20 million in incremental annual revenue
Black Friday: 150% increase in order rate with new customers using search recommendations
The search bar checklist
Make it impossible to miss. Centre it. Make it wide. Make it obvious.
Write a placeholder that works. "Search…" does nothing. "Search for a product, ingredient, or concern" tells the customer exactly what the bar can do.
Never show a zero-results page. Make sure that at least one result will show for every search query. And suggest related products, popular searches, or categories.
Use autocomplete and use it well. Autocomplete can boost conversions by up to 24% when properly configured. It reduces cognitive load mid-query and guides the customer toward results before they've finished typing.
Read your search data every month. Your zero-results list is a direct inventory of gaps: products customers want that you don't have, or products you do have but aren't naming the way customers name them.
The magnifying glass is a 500-year-old symbol for focused attention.
When your customer reaches for it on your store, they're telling you exactly what they want.
The only question is whether you're listening.
🫙 Idea Jar
Help me pick the next deep dive: Which part of a shopping website do you think matters most? The search bar, Filters and sorting, Product page layout, The cart page or the Checkout flow. I’d be happy to feature your pick!
See you next Monday, Nithya
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
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