Read what people type into your search bar. When a visitor searches for "black dress" and you have a dresses category, they either didn't see it in the menu or it goes by another name.
The benchmark
Three reports are enough: the fifty most frequent internal searches, the breakdown of clicks in the mobile menu, and the searches that return no results.
On Shopify, the first two reports are called "Searches by query" and "Searches without results." If category names show up at the top of your searches, your menu isn't doing its job.
Visits that use search are also your best ones. At an accessories brand the authors work with, 15% of sessions used it, and those sessions converted at 3.4% versus 0.7% for the rest, nearly five times higher, with revenue per visit fifteen times higher. The search engine, meanwhile, offered nothing for "gamele": one missing letter, zero suggestions.
The rule
Name your categories with your customers' words, not the words you use for your collections. In France, the menu matters more than elsewhere: across 35 million sessions studied in seven countries, French shoppers interact with it the most, while British shoppers jump straight to the search bar.
Don't move the search bar lightly: at a perfume house, a featured menu entry gained 5% in conversion and was rolled out; the mobile search bar moved next to the menu, on the same site, cost us 12% of revenue per visit, and we removed it.
The steps
- The export. Pull internal searches from the last three months.
- The matching. Spot the ones that match an existing category.
- The renaming. Rename these categories or move them up in the menu.
- The five-person test. Ask five people to find three specific products on their phone, without using search.
- The no-result searches. Deal with them: synonyms, common typos, products you don't carry. On Shopify, synonym groups are set up in the free Search & Discovery app.
A sentence to say to your leadership, in your own words:
"Our categories use the words from the top fifty searches, not the words from our collections. And we don't move the search bar without a test."
The trap
The trap is a menu that mirrors your internal organization. "Fall Collection," "The Essentials," "The Workshop" make sense to the team, much less to someone looking for a sweater.
One executive, going through her menu with the authors in late August:
"Menu 2025, main menu… I don't know where that comes from, it's not a collection name on my end. Can you confirm it's useless and I'll call it old?"
An agency had left that menu behind; agencies leave some behind every time. And don't judge your menu on desktop: the vast majority of your visitors will only see the mobile version. Open it on your phone before you judge it.
