It’s no secret Experticity is all about connecting experts with brands. We’re constantly searching for new and better ways to make those strong connections, and we uncovered one such opportunity in late 2017.

We dug into the search terms used by experts on Experticity.com and discovered that many of them were searching specifically for brands and products. However, the search function was only pulling up brand campaigns, which wasn’t what they expected. So we set about giving the experts what they wanted, and enhanced our site search to include brand and product results.

Over the course of several months, we completed user testing and took the qualitative and quantitative feedback from those sessions and integrated it into a newly-designed global search. Now search terms will pull up results that feature products and brand pages, which showcase not only that brand’s current campaigns but their store and community UGC page, as well.

We’re already seeing double the number of store conversions for experts who visit a store page after reaching that brand through search results. And out of all the experts who use the search, 56 percent are clicking through to brand pages.

Along with enhancing our search, we implemented the ability for experts to follow brands, meaning they could keep tabs on the ones they were extra interested in. We gave iOS users beta access to the new follow feature, then fully launched it along with Global Search on the desktop version of the site later on.

This new feature was launched on iOS first and built right into the new global search, then launched as a separate feature on the desktop version of the site later on.

Again, even after only a month, we’ve seen incredible engagement with this new feature. 45,532 experts have followed at least one brand, with an average of 7.4 brands followed per expert. This accounts for 337,514 unique expert brand follows, with more to surely come.

These results illustrate that even small changes can have a huge impact on expert engagement. And it shows that experts are eager to engage with brands on Experticity, learn from their content, and shop in their stores.