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Rebecca Thompson

The Seven Deadly Sins of Site Search - Sin #3

Deadly Sin #3: Complexity

In my previous posts on the seven deadly sins of site search, we’ve addressed the sins of omission (no site search) and apathy (poor site search). Today we tackle one that often occurs when a company is trying its best to help visitors find information by offering multiple search engines. For every large company out there that has no site search box, there is another that will have multiple search boxes.

While providing the ability to allow site visitors to search is a requirement, having too many search boxes may just be too much of a good thing. It adds unnecessary complexity to site design and is very likely to do nothing more than confuse users, who will rightly ask, “which search box should I use—is one better than the other?” For example, look at the North American website of Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), one of the largest agricultural processors in the world:

ADM Screenshot

ADM’s website offers two locations for search on their website—where should a user start?

On the top right there is a site search box. Perfect placement. Now look further down on the right and you’ll notice a graphical element for “ADM PRODUCT SEARCH.” Which one would you use? Would you know if what you were looking for on the ADM site is more likely to be found using the site search or product search?

Frankly, asking visitors to choose between multiple search functions is too much to ask. A better choice would be to implement a search solution that could incorporate the contents of ALL document repositories and give the product database search results visual prominence, if those results do indeed have special relevance for a given query.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 2:00 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.

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  1. June 12th, 2007, at 2:37 pm # The Seven Deadly Sins of Site Search - Sin #3  »Technology News | Venture Capital, Startups, Silicon Valley, Web 2.0 Tech wrote:

    […] Source:Search Done Right Deadly Sin #3: Complexity In my previous posts on the seven deadly sins of site search, we’ve addressed the sins of omission (no site search) and apathy (poor site search). Today we tackle one that often occurs when a company is trying its best to help visitors find information by offering multiple search engines. For every […] Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]

Discussion

  1. August 26th, 2007, at 6:36 pm # dianne roman wrote:

    when will the fourth deadly sin be told? and the fifth, the sixth and the seventh?

  2. October 31st, 2007, at 10:59 am # Anne wrote:

    My question also! And it’s now NOVEMBER!

  3. October 31st, 2007, at 12:49 pm # Rebecca Thompson wrote:

    Okay, okay - I got the message. #4 is now posted.

  4. November 30th, 2007, at 11:32 am # Lorna Renton wrote:

    I disagree with this being a sin.
    The site I work on has resources, events, advice, policy documents, case studies and news.
    Any given query might return results in all of these categories.
    We cannot tell from a simple query what the user is most interested in.
    And I think adding a range of check box options to the simple search to get the user to define what they want would be a far worse sin.

    Also, usability testing shows our users first preference is too look in the navigation and content links to see if they can find an obvious route to what they are looking for, and only if they dont see anything meaningful will they try the search.

    Therefore having an additional resource finder and case study search option is not a sin.

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