While attending the Best eCommerce Tests webinar recently hosted by Anne Holland at whichtestwon.com, she referenced a Marketing Sherpa study about the behaviors of on-site searchers.  A few key takeaways from those studies:

• Searching has become the predominant method for users to find products on websites.  While navigation tools and site architecture are almost equally important, more and more, consumers are using your on-site search to find what they are looking for quickly.
• Searchers are almost twice as likely to convert as non-searchers in a given visit.
• More often than not, a vertical listing format on the search results page converts better than a grid layout.

Suffice it to say, the search results page on an eCommerce site is something that is of high importance and something that deserves your attention.  Specifically, I want to cover how you can improve the performance of your site search within Magento Commerce – although the tactics can be applied to any eCommerce platform with similar capabilities – but Magento has some fundamental, out of box features to help  you improve your search results.