Your customers can't find it. It's because they don't speak your language

I’m a SINK no, not the handwashing place, Single Income, No Kids… unless you count the dog and two cats. Which means I can occasionally afford to buy the expensive scented candles.

Despite having a candle by said brand sitting on the desk in front of me, I trip up every time. I also have to look at the keyboard when typing because how many times do you use a word with the letter ‘q’ in it? Let’s just say typing it doesn’t flow off the fingers so to speak.

Can you guess what it is yet? Well, funnily enough, you wouldn’t be alone. Neither can SpaceNK.

If I were typing slower, and / or looking at the screen when I type, their autocomplete sort of kicks in. But sometimes it doesn’t or it just gets it wrong.

This is a brand they stock, because where else would I buy them from (loyalty points, IYKYK). I don’t go browsing for them because their navigation makes my brain hurt.

To someone new to the site, they’d be like “oh, they just don’t stock it”, give up and leave. That’s a potential £48 sale down the toilet. I don’t know about you, but what business wants to throw away an almost £50 sale because their search isn’t being managed?

A few years ago I was building synonyms for the newly deployed search on the NHS website. Health content, symptoms, conditions, the usual.

What became apparent very quickly is that the vocabulary problem isn't one problem. It's three.

The first layer is clinical terminology. The Latin-origin, medically precise term that clinicians use and that patients either don't know, can't spell, or actively avoid because it sounds frightening. Nobody types "diarrhoea" into a search bar. For a start, they can't spell it. Neither can I, and it's literally my job. Oh, and neither can most doctors.

The second layer is plain English. The friendly version. "Upset stomach" or, more accurately, "runny poo." The NHS style guide leans into this deliberately, because plain English saves lives. If people can't find the page, they can't read the guidance.

The third layer is colloquial. And this is where it gets interesting.

I found out, through a completely incidental conversation with someone who worked in the prison service, that people in prison were using entirely different vocabulary to search for health information. Not clinical terms, not plain English, not even the casual language most of us use. Their own words, shaped by their own context and community.

We would never have known to build those synonyms if someone hadn't mentioned it in passing. There was no research brief. No user testing. Just a conversation that happened to surface the gap.

Here's what this means for your catalogue.

Your customers are not using your words. They're using their words. And their words are shaped by where they grew up, who they talk to, how old they are, and which corner of the internet they inhabit. A product you call a "gilet" is being searched as a "bodywarmer," a "puffer vest," and at least three other things depending on who's typing.

The businesses that fix this don't do it by guessing. They do it by reading what their customers actually type: in site search, in support requests, in reviews, in the way they describe the problem they're trying to solve. That data exists. Most businesses just aren't looking at it.

If you're not sure whether your vocabulary and your customers' vocabulary are even in the same postcode, that's exactly what a diagnostic surfaces.

Before you spend money on tools, ask the people who talk to your customers every day. Your customer service team, your delivery drivers, your shop floor staff if you have them. Ask them: "What words do customers use that we don't use ourselves?" The answers will surprise you. They know. They've been absorbing your customers' vocabulary for years and nobody has ever written it down.

It's free, it takes an afternoon, and it's often more useful than six months of analytics.

You know, I wish Eliot understood those words consistently. But he doesn’t, he’s a 13 week old sharp teefed bundle of catastrophe (ask the cats). However, what he does know are patterns.

He knows when I get up. Any later, and he’ll shred a pee pad.

He knows if I throw his favourite toy and he brings it back, drops it and sits down, he’ll get a treato (several in fact).

My vocabulary is not his vocabulary. But we’re working on a built in translation tool. When that fails, he simply does what he wants (he excels at this, as my nerves suggest).

That gap between “I want” and “buy now” we fix that. get in touch

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