How the BCIT team generates $23m in revenue with search

Learn how the BCIT web team managed to reduce search refinement on their website to drive up revenue.

Lorna Hegarty 25 Aug 2022

British Columbia Institute of Technology

Founded in 1964, the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) inspires students beyond classroom studies and provides job-ready graduates to industries across Canada and the world. BCIT has established itself as one of Canada’s leading educational institutions in business, technology and trade programs.

Industry

Higher Education

Products

Unsatisfactory search results

After the discontinuation of the Google search appliance, BCIT replaced Google site search with another search tool. The primary goal for the new site search at BCIT was to help site visitors find the content they need, quickly, without having to make multiple searches.

The team also wanted the ability to promote results with the same styling as standard results and the ability to customise the look and feel of their search results pages.

However, the results were unsatisfactory, to say the least.

Alan Etkin, Web Analyst at BCIT, recounts, “Unfortunately, the results proved to be nothing short of frustrating for our users - even though we made extensive customizations to the interface, and configured it to search the specifics of our content.“

Within the configuration of this other search solution, the BCIT team prioritized searches for courses and programs, which had the unintended and adverse effect of burying results for common non-academic searches like parking, registration deadlines and service departments.

After receiving negative feedback from the community, and after exploring the limited options for improving the configuration, they started to look at other products.

Comparison test

The team started its comprehensive research process by evaluating several different search solutions.

The test covered both academic and general information queries. The team focused on their top search terms and highest search term refinements. Course programs were of course at the top of the list, but some less obvious keywords - such as “parking” for visiting students - were also included.

We ran a detailed comparison looking at results across 30 search terms, and Squiz DXP Search – with basically out-of-the-box indexing – provided better results for 26/30 of the terms.

The team at BCIT and Squiz worked together to implement Squiz DXP Search.

Faceted Navigation

Faceted navigation, people search and related searches were important factors in creating a positive search experience for the team and website visitors.

Funnelback’s best bet feature and curator tool empowered the team to customize results in the style that matched BCIT’s existing results. The web team at BCIT promoted results to the top of search results pages that answered the most searched terms over the previous year.

Monitoring results with Google Analytics

The team had long been measuring the effectiveness of search with Google Analytics. In addition to the number of people using search, the team carefully considered search refinements - searchers who conduct a second search immediately after the first, likely because the first page did not contain the desired result.

The web team at BCIT had carefully calculated monetized goal values in Google Analytics for key behaviors on their site.

Search, it turned out, was a high-value activity on the website.

With Squiz Search DXP, they wanted to maximize these monetized behaviors and increase the value of each website visitor. Their new site search solution would need to increase the number of search users and reduce the number of search refinements.

Decreasing search refinements

“Our goal for internal search is to help site visitors find the content they need, quickly, without having to make multiple refinements to their search terms,” noted Alan Etkin at BCIT.

Using Google Analytics data to segment new and returning visitors to the BCIT site, the team has seen an overall 6.7% drop in search refinements. For mobile users, a growing percentage of site traffic, and search refinements have decreased by as high as 22%.

Looking at our most searched terms over the previous year, we checked their search rankings and promoted approximately 50 to the top of the results. The search refinements for many of these terms dropped by up to 60%.

Distinct from the earlier solutions, Squiz Search DXP allowed BCIT to promote results and appear with the same styling as other organic results.

The knowledge that visitors who use site search are more valuable to the institution has already significantly impacted their business goals and results.

ROI of search results

Continuing to monitor key metrics in Google Analytics, the team saw that over the first six months with Squiz DXP search, site search users have a per-user goal value of approximately $114, compared to the site average of $23.

Site visitors using search are meeting more of BCIT’s business goals. The team saw a 10.6% increase in the use of search and a 7.6% increase in per-user goal value from search users since implementing Squiz's search capability. By multiplying the increased goal value by the total number of search users, BCIT has seen a solid return on investment.

Performance Calculator

Search revenue is approximately 40% ($23m) of total site revenue, generated by 10% of site users. Now that’s a fine argument in and of itself for investing in site search.

The team has built a calculator that can forecast how much additional revenue they can generate if they can drive more of their traffic to search.

Alan estimates that if they can get 5% more of their traffic to use search, they can expect an increase of ~$1m in revenue.

Now the team is committed to driving more traffic to the BCIT site and encouraging visitors to use internal site search as much as possible. With Squiz DXP Search, BCIT has an intelligent search engine to power the site experience and drive its business goals.