Identifying Trending Searches for a Large Retail Pharmacy

Executive Summary

The retail industry has been transformed by the rise of e-commerce, and with it, the importance of online search. It is especially  true for the pharmacies, where customers rely on accurate and timely information to make informed decisions about their  health. Data-driven insights are indispensable to businesses to make strategic decisions both about patient health and improve  business growth. A large retail pharmacy chain in the US faced the challenge of identifying the most popular search queries on  their website. They wanted to leverage the insights gained from analyzing search data to enhance the user experience and drive more traffic to their platform, ultimately increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

The Factspan team developed an internal trending algorithm that could be updated and adjusted based on business  requirements. It was developed with a multi-step approach that involved analyzing historical search data, filtering out  irrelevant searches, correcting user intent using spell check, and eliminating similar terms. The solution increased visibility of  trending searches for new users, provided insights on the most popular search queries, and enhanced user experience on the  platform.

About the Client

The client is a leading retail pharmacy chain based out of the United States. The organization operates across 10,000 (approx.) locations in the US. They provide a wide range of healthcare products and services, including prescription medications, over-the-counter drugs, health and wellness products, and other medical supplies. The client also has a robust online platform, where customers can conveniently order and refill their prescriptions, as well as access personalized health information and resources

Business Challenge

The client faced the challenge of identifying the most popular healthcare product search queries on their platform, across medicines, vitamins, and wellness products. The existing system was unable to provide insights on trending searches, resulting in lower visibility, and potentially hindering the client’s ability to provide accessible healthcare products to their customers. Even new visitors found it difficult to get relevant products for their searches

Our Solution

The team of experts at Factspan developed a solution that involved multiple steps to identify and publish trending topics. The approach included analyzing historical search data to understand seasonal and cyclic patterns. The client mainly provides pharmacy-related products, but they also have a range of other products. Hence, to avoid skewing the results with pharmacy specific data, searches related to pharmacy items were removed.

To streamline the analysis, the team opted to focus solely on search terms that yielded relevant results while excluding irrelevant bot traffic, profane words, and searches with no results. Finally, the trending topics were computed daily, and updates were shared with the client’s front-end team.

Z-Score Analysis: Z-score helps in identifying a trending topic in the recent past that has been subjected to the statistical correction of unknown factors.

Factspan team created a metric that factored in search count and time period for each term in the model, which eliminated duplicates and filtered out unnecessary similar terms from the top 20 trending searches. The solution resulted in increased internal visibility of the search terms and enabled higher sales for the client.

Business Impact

• Trending algorithm increased visibility by 25%
• Precise data-driven insights on inventory, marketing, and website optimization
• Improved accuracy led to 30% more user engagement
• Daily trending topic computation and 40% increase in click-through rate
• Daily trending topics raised sales by 20% • Insights led to 15% higher conversion of platform visitors to customers