Prepopulated search bars can significantly boost online sales, says marketing study

A study in the journal Marketing Science finds that prepopulating e-commerce search bars with trending or personalized keywords can meaningfully increase both purchasing and consumer spending. The research provides the first causal evidence on how subtle search bar design choices shape the entire online shopping journey—from query to checkout.

The study, titled “How Does Prepopulating Search Bars with Keywords Affect Online Consumer Behavior? A Field Experiment,” was authored by Chenshuo Sun of the Business School of Renmin University of China.

The study found that automatically prepopulating the search bar with trending keywords, such as popular product categories, increased purchase incidence by 10.4% and overall spending by 8.8% compared with an empty search bar. When the search bar was prepopulated with personalized keywords, reflecting items the user had recently browsed, purchase incidence rose by 21% and spending by 17%.

Prepopulating with niche keywords, unrelated to the user’s search history or patterns, had little to no measurable effect on consumer behavior.

The research is based on a randomized field experiment involving 72,587 consumers on a major Asian e-commerce platform. Each user was randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions or a control group. In the treatment conditions, the platform’s mobile app displayed a search bar that was prefilled with either a trending category keyword, a personalized keyword based on the user’s browsing history, or a niche product keyword. The control group saw the default empty search bar.

“Search bars are the starting point of most e-commerce journeys,” said Sun. “The findings show that a simple change, pre-filling a search bar with relevant, trending, or personalized terms, can meaningfully influence what people discover and buy online.”

The study also reveals that prepopulated search bars do not reduce consumers’ use of other navigation tools, such as homepage menus or recommendation widgets. In other words, the feature generates incremental sales without cannibalizing other browsing channels.

The research clarified two factors driving user behavior: The first is that trending keywords specifically encouraged exploration of popular categories without discouraging users from entering their own search terms. The second is that personalized keywords focused users’ attention on previously viewed categories, deepening engagement but reducing the likelihood of user-entered searches.

Both strategies ultimately increased sales, though for different reasons. The former by expanding user exploration, and the latter by reinforcing users’ existing interests.

“To the best of my knowledge, this paper provides the first evidence of the effectiveness of search bar pre-population strategies based on a field experiment conducted on a real-world e-commerce platform,” said Sun. “E-commerce platforms can use this insight to improve both user experience and revenue. Prepopulated search bars save time, add ease of use, and help guide users more efficiently toward products they value.”