Poor search functionality on websites is killing loyalty and costing sales

Customer frustration — Data shows that 72 per cent of Australian shoppers have left brands due to poor website search.

By My Nguyen Mar 9, 2026

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New research from Elastic shows that 72 per cent of Australian shoppers have left brands due to poor website search, with over half willing to pay more at competitor sites for better search functionality.

The study, which surveyed 1020 Australian consumers last month, suggests that legacy keyword-based systems are failing to meet the rising expectations set by generative AI.

According to the report, 55 per cent of shoppers are willing to pay more for a product on a competitor’s website if that site offers an easier search experience.

The cost of search friction

When a website’s internal search fails to deliver relevant results, consumers frequently turn to external platforms.

The data shows that 62 per cent of shoppers move to external search engines when they cannot find an item on-site; of those, 78 per cent are eventually redirected to a competing brand.

The impact on brand loyalty is immediate for a segment of the population, with 11 per cent of consumers reporting they would permanently abandon a brand after a single failed search.

“Your search bar has become your biggest competitor’s best salesperson. Search is no longer a utility feature. It is a revenue driver,” said Jeremy Pell, country manager ANZ at Elastic.

“Retailers that cannot understand customer intent across structured and the messy, unstructured data trapped in PDFs, emails, images and text messages, that traditional systems can’t easily read, are actively directing shoppers to competitors,”

The rise of tools like ChatGPT has changed how Australians interact with digital storefronts. The research highlights a move away from traditional keyword ‘tags’ toward natural language:

52 per cent of shoppers aged 25-34 now use full sentences and conversational queries.

62 per cent of shoppers expect retail search bars to be as intelligent as dedicated AI assistants.

76 per cent of respondents expressed interest in photo or voice search options.

60 per cent of customers judge a brand as “technologically behind” if it returns irrelevant search results.

Frustration levels remain high across age groups. Approximately 69 per cent of Australian shoppers admit to shouting at a website search bar when it fails to produce results.

While shoppers aged 35-44 reported the highest levels of frustration, 17 per cent of consumers aged 65 and over also reported verbalising anger at failing search filters.