Search Done Right

In a Forrester Research survey published last March, almost 50% of users surveyed said that the first thing they did when navigating an unfamiliar website was to use the site search function to find information. Yet, according to Forrester, more than half of the sites they recently reviewed failed to provide a comprehensive site search or search interface. It’s not uncommon for companies to spend upwards of $1M on a website redesign and then neglect or skimp on providing high quality site search.

Let’s look in depth at some of the biggest “sins” of corporate website search committed by companies with both the talent and resources to do better. We’ll start this week with the first of seven we’ve identified - read on to see if your company is one of the guilty …

Deadly Sin #1: Omission

According to web usability guru Jakob Nielsen, users love search for two reasons:

1. Search lets users control their own destiny and assert independence from websites’ attempt to direct how they use the Web. Testing situations routinely validate this. A typical comment is: “I don’t want to have to navigate this site the way they want me to. I just want to find the thing I’m looking for.” This is why many users go straight to the home page search function.

2. Search is also users’ escape hatch when they are stuck in navigation. When they can’t find a reasonable place to go next, they often turn to the site’s search function. This is why you should make search available from every page on the site; you cannot predict where users will be when they become lost.

Most of you are likely nodding your heads in agreement. Unfortunately, there are still examples of Fortune 500 sites that have no search function or place the search functionality where most users would be hard-pressed to find it, such as a link at the bottom of the home page rather than in the top right where users have come to expect it.

Take, for example, the website of Yum! Brands, Inc.* :

According to the company, it is “the world’s largest in terms of system restaurants with over 34,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. Four of its restaurant brands - KFC, Long John Silver’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell - are the global leaders of the chicken, quickservice seafood, pizza and Mexican-style food categories. A&W Restaurants is the longest running quick-service franchise chain in America. In 2005, Yum! Brands generated more than $9 billion in total revenues, including company sales and franchise fees.”

That is pretty impressive. Its website is also impressive—graphically appealing with lots of information and many navigation options for different audiences: investors, job seekers and potential franchisees. Very nice. Just one thing is missing—a search box. Perhaps the company feels that its site visitors can find everything they need via navigation - and with the emphasis in marketing publications on web persona creation, this is completely understandable. But given the large and growing percentage of people that prefer to search versus navigate, omitting all search capability is definitely a bet against the prevailing odds.

If your site does not yet have search, plan to add it soon. However, beware of correcting this sin and committing the other, equally serious ones I’ll discuss in later posts - most of which are related to choosing and implementing a site search solution without doing the necessary homework to ensure that both the goals of site visitors and the company itself are met.

*Note: The companies selected as examples for the “Deadly Sin” series were chosen at random from a list of Fortune 500 web properties and are only used to illustrate common site search problems. It is not the author’s intention to single them out as unique in regards to site search.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.