Not all shoppers who type "shoes" in a site search bar are looking for the same thing. One is browsing summer styles for fun. Another is in a rush, trying to replace a pair before a flight. A third knows exactly which SKU they want, down to the size and color.
They may enter the same query, but their intent is wildly different — and your search engine’s ability to detect and respond to that intent can make or break the conversion. True ecommerce intelligence comes from interpreting not just the query, but the signals around it: their click path, filter use, scroll depth, or even referral source.
Let’s explore how intelligent search can use these signals to “read the room” and deliver search and browse experiences that match each shopper’s mindframe.
Mindframes, Not Personas: How to Detect Intent on Arrival
Rather than using static personas (which attempt to profile people in general), let’s think in terms of session-based mindframes, or the temporary yet powerful psychological modes shoppers enter when they visit your site.
Across the millions of shopper journeys analyzed annually by Constructor, we see experiences fall into four intent-driven modes:
- Casual Shoppers are browsing without a specific goal
- Explorers are curious, comparing and collecting options
- Spearfishers are actively looking, but still deciding
- Snipers know what they want and want it now
Understanding these mindframes, detecting them early, and catching when they change as your shopper interacts with your site makes all the difference in delivering satisfying and profitable experiences.
Let’s unpack each mindframe and how to detect and serve shoppers within each.
1. Casual shoppers
Causal shoppers arrive without clear intent or urgency. They may have landed on your site via a social media post, email campaign, or simply love your brand and are making their rounds.
Often, they are familiar with your site and may be visiting because you’re running a sitewide sale or it’s the beginning of a season, but the key is their low intent. They’re less likely to search and often follow seemingly random click paths across categories and departments.
Detecting Casual Shoppers
Here are some hallmarks of casual shoppers:
- Entry via homepage or PDPs from social/email
- Browsing across unrelated categories
- Low depth of browsed categories (high-level categories over deep and specific)
- Low use of site search (and if so, they’ll use ‘head’ terms)
Serving Casual Shoppers
Despite their low urgency, casual shoppers have high influenceability if you serve them right:
- Boost new, best sellers and great deals across browse pages (and annotate listings with these badges)
- Guide their path with hero banners and product grid content cards promoting popular categories and themes (a.k.a. searchandising)
- Apply personalization as they provide intent signals during their session and subsequent visits
What’s more, casual shoppers are less likely to perceive pop-ups, slide-ins, and proactive chat as intrusive as visitors on a heads-down mission.
2. Explorers
Explorer-mode shoppers are more active than casual browsers. They’re in-market for something — maybe a gift, a product upgrade, or a category they’re newly interested in — but they haven’t made any decisions yet.
These users typically arrive through SEO, social media links, or influencer content, and they exhibit "catalog surfing" behavior: jumping between product list pages, hearting items, and comparing across categories.
They may use search, often entering broad, head-term queries like “blender” or “running shoes.” They also spend time browsing and scoping out value (i.e., is your brand trustworthy? Is your product mix impressive? Are there good deals?).
Detecting Explorers
Here are some hints that shoppers may be in explorer mode:
- Entry via search, social, or email campaigns
- Drilling down through categories to subcategories and applying filters
- Using site search to navigate towards a category (or similar “head terms”)
- Building a wishlist
Serving Explorers
For explorers with medium intent, your goal is to show breadth and value:
- Use dynamic ranking on PLPs to blend relevance with popularity
- Highlight social proof, top-rated products, “staff picks,” and fast-shipping items
- Boost trending products in product grids
- Surface filters above the fold to encourage narrowing down
- Use searchandising banners to guide them towards themed collections of subcategories
Explorers are one step closer to buying than casual browsers, but they still need guidance. These shoppers benefit from scaffolding in your UI: your visible subcategory links, promoted filters, and product annotations go a long way to support their journey.
3. Spearfishers
Spearfishers come with intent to purchase — soon. They often arrive directly on a PDP from a search engine, or use your site search with longer tail queries that include attributes, brands, or price cues.
These shoppers are scoping for the best fit, best deal, or best bundle. They want relevance in product discovery, but they’re steered by attractiveness. And there’s room to influence as they’re deciding between several good options.
Detecting Spearfishers
- Direct entry to product pages from search
- Long-tail queries with attributes, brand mentions, or price cues
- Applying sorts, especially price Low-High or High-Low
- Applying price filters or sliding ranges in faceted navigation
- High engagement with PDP content
Serving Spearfishers
Here’s where search relevance gets real. It’s critical to leverage semantic search to ensure spearfishers’ longer-tail queries are properly matched, and to incorporate behavioral signals to optimize results. In addition:
- Promote scoping options (i.e. show sub-category banners and visible promoted filter chips above the product grid), especially size and price
- Limit unrelated distractions like banners for your loyalty program or new arrivals
- Limit unrelated recommendations (e.g. cross-sells from different categories); instead, suggest high-affinity add-ons or upgrades to nudge up AOV
- Consider dynamic re-ranking of products or facets*
*Dynamic reranking is an optional setting within Constructor that updates product list pages based on which products visitors click and view. For example, after clicking through a product with specific attributes, products that share these attributes will receive a boost when the user returns to the product list. Faceted navigation sections and list items can also be re-ranked in this context.
When multiple products satisfy their speared search, visual information like badges (e.g. Top Rated or Best Value) and user reviews often act as the tie-breaker for first-click from the product grid. Helping them get that first click right the first time boosts conversion rates.
4. Snipers
Snipers are here for the kill. They’re “presold.” They’ll either find the product and buy it immediately, or they’ll leave to get it elsewhere. They’ve arrived directly to a PDP or will search for a product by name (if it’s not in their wishlist or cart already).
Detecting Snipers:
- Direct visit to PDP from search engine with a long-tail referring keyword
- Beeline to search box, bypassing browse menu (if not arriving direct to PDP)
- Precise site search query including brand or product name (e.g., “tatcha silk sunscreen spf 50”)
- Deep category browsing, especially direct navigation from main menu
- Returning visit with recent long-tail search behavior and page views
- Fast click-to-product from search results page
- Fast add-to-cart or bounce behavior from PDP
Serving Snipers:
To win the sniper, optimize for precision:
- Surface the most likely match immediately and consider using “Buy Now” or “Quick Add” buttons (depending on your industry)
- Avoid inserting sponsored or cross-category product recommendations unless they’re tightly aligned with the search query
- Consider serving a proactive AI assistant if they show signs of hesitation within their journey
Snipers are your high-converting segment — if you don’t get in their way. Minimize friction and support a quick conversion path.
What to do when you don't have the exact product
Sometimes shoppers search for a specific brand or item you don’t carry. The worst-case scenario is a zero-results page or a barrage of irrelevant products. The better move? Detect their intent and serve attractive, relevant substitutes.
For example, if someone searches for “Drunk Elephant vitamin C serum,” and you don’t carry it, you might suggest comparable serums with similar ingredients, price points, or social proof.
Just be careful with sponsored placements if you’re using retail media. Avoid showing promoted products unless they match the query closely. Irrelevant ads can damage trust, especially with sniper or spearfisher types.
Sniffing Out Shifting Intent
Here’s where it gets interesting: intent can (and often does) change mid-session. A casual browser can become a spearfisher if the right product catches their eye. An explorer may turn into a sniper after adding one product to their cart and deciding to return for a specific brand or variant.
These intent shifts can be inferred from micro-behaviors:
- Refined or broadened search terms
- Net-new searches and category clicks
- Shifting to sale and clearance sections
- Changing filters or sort order
- Clicking on searchandising banners or quizzes
- High engagement on PDPs (scrolling, image zoom, variant clicks, description tab opens, interaction with UGC)
- Backtracking from a PDP and returning to a broader category
- Abandoning a product after reading reviews or inspecting ingredients
- Returning to cart multiple times
These are signs the user is rethinking their journey. And that’s your chance to re-sequence content, guide with smarter recs, or trigger contextual messaging.
Smart ecommerce systems watch for these clues and respond. You might re-rank results dynamically, trigger a product-finding quiz, or show a new recommendation pod with a contextual title like “Still deciding?” or “Great alternatives to what you viewed.” Or, trigger proactive assistance (like an AI shopping agent or dynamic quiz prompt).
Gifting and Edge Cases
Outside typical mindframes, there are high-impact edge cases like gift shopping or post-in-store product recall.
Gift buyers often display unusual patterns: new categories, gender/age-specific keywords, or search terms like “ideas,” “gifts for,” or “under $50.”
Others may be trying to locate a product they can’t name — describing it based on color, size, or features. If they saw something in-store or on Instagram but can’t identify it exactly, they’ll try long, descriptive queries. These are opportunities for semantic matching, guided selling, or even proactive assistance via chat or AI modules.
Intent-aware search engines can pick up on these anomalies and tailor experiences accordingly — surfacing curated gift guides, themed collections, or limited-time bundles. These shoppers often welcome guidance, especially when they’re not familiar with the category.
The Takeaway: Intent is the Conversion Layer
Users aren’t always explicit about what they want, but their actions tell the story: where they came from, what they click, how they search, and when they hesitate are all digital body language signals your ecommerce systems can pick up on to deliver exceptional experiences — namely search and discovery.
If you want to go beyond relevance, you need to listen closely. Not just to their keywords, but to their momentum. Because when you clock their intent, every element of the experience — from filters to banners to recommendations — becomes more personally attractive.
Ready to Match Merchandising to Shopper Mindframes?
Constructor’s AI-native approach means we don’t just interpret search queries — we understand shoppers. By tapping into behavioral signals and detecting micro-shifts in intent, Constructor reshapes the entire discovery journey in real time to make it more effective. Our proprietary attractiveness algorithm personalizes product results, faceted navigation, searchandizing banners and recommendation blocks for experiences that feel intuitive, relevant and helpful.
Attractiveness drives revenue. Don’t just trust us, make us prove it. Book a Search Experience Audit today.