Site Search Influence
How does your On-site Search influence your visitor’s experience?
As more and more of the online population rely on the main search engines to navigate the Web, they instinctively look to On-site search to help them navigate within a site. Recent data from Jupiter Research and from Double-click confirm this trend: On-site search usage is growing rapidly. Typically, however, On-site search does little to enhance the user experience. A standard aspect of our Attitudinal Analytics??? site analysis measures the degree to which the various aspects of a site contribute to the visit success (based on the user???s intent). Rare is the instance when On-site search consistently ranks anywhere but at the bottom. The pattern holds true even at the world???s most successful software company.
This company needed a survey instrument that could capture real usage data about their On-site search function. Their key requirement was that survey responses and specific click data are collected as an integrated record, without need for any form of download on the part of the user, and without using either pop-up windows or i-frames to ask questions. Usability Sciences developed a solution called Search Companion. It allows our clients to capture huge volumes of On-site search usage data of great contextual relevance in a very short period, including:
- The result of the search
- The keyword (search string) used
- User satisfaction with the speed, relevance, and usability of the search function
- The user???s next step
- The actual intent of their search (open text response)
- The link within the Search Results page they clicked on (if any)
- The position within the results of that click (first result, second, etc.)
Actionable findings leap out of this data. For example, our analysis software can tell a client in a couple of seconds, for example, which keywords produced failed searches where the user saw nothing of relevance on the first page of results page, along with the users’ contextual explanation of the actual search intent. This data fuels continuous improvement of the search function. Because we capture the keyword, the link the user followed, and the outcome of that decision, we also create specific Search personas to assist site designers. The true value of Search Companion is that it can be quickly and inexpensively deployed to gather contextual data for any aspect of online operations or processes. We have deployed it to gather design preference feedback on newsletters, and it is ideal for targeted projects such as checkout, loan application, or registration. (On-site search, however, seems to be the market???s most acute pain point.)