Sometimes you get it, and sometimes you don’t…
Search terms that is. Sometimes you have the right word or phrase, and then sometimes you don’t. Research shows that sometimes as many as 49% of users fail in returning meaningful results on their first try with a site search, some due to incorrect or incorrectly spelled search terms (Nielsen, 2006). This is a serious issue considering that many users give up if they don’t succeed the first time that they use the Search field within a website.
For example, in the screenshot below, the term “Footwear” was entered in the Search field of an apparel website and did not return any results. This might lead a consumer to believe that the website does not sell shoes and possibly cause the user to leave the site without making a purchase.
One the same site, if the consumer were to try another search term, such as “Shoes”, the results would be much different (successful!), as shown in the screenshot below.
A second example, from a recent study of a hospitality site in our own lab, was highlighted when a participant misspelled Hawaii by entering only one “i”. The site returned results for Howe, Indiana because it did not correctly alias “Hawai” as “Hawaii”. The participant did not realize that the results were for the wrong location, and spent several minutes reviewing the hotels before the moderator was eventually forced to inform the participant of what had occurred. When the search engine did not recognize a location with the spelling “Hawai”, the ideal solution would have been for the site to ask the participant, ‘Did you mean Hawaii?’, rather than assuming that Howe, Indiana was the correct location. Unfortunately, these are only a few examples of site search issues, which are commonplace across the Web today and highlights the need for implementation of intelligent site search functionality.
Fortunately, simple remedies are within reach and some tips are listed below to help make your site search more “intelligent”.
- Proper product name(s)
- Product nickname(s)
- Words that describe the product
- Misspellings of the product name(s) and nickname(s)
- One and two word versions of the same term; Foot Wear vs. Footwear
- Variations in capitalization
Following these steps can make sure that not only does the consumer get the right term, but that they get the right product. ??”Search: Visible and Simple.” Alertbox. 13 May 2001. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010513.html
Katie Mauck
Usability Analyst