Here's why in-site search engines
typically don't work:
First,
they don't work. Redundant?
Not really. Despite what you may think,
the odds actually are very low that your
shopper's search is going to give them
what they’re looking for. And if it
doesn’t, they’re gone. As Larry
Constantine, Director of Research &
Development at Constantine & Lockwood,
Ltd., says,
"Indeed,
the research on searching is both
clear and consistent. If a visitor
uses a site-based search engine, their
chances of finding what they are
seeking, even given that it is on the
site, are drastically reduced. Jared
Spool has found that using the search
box can cut a visitor's chance of
success in half. In other words, if,
instead of searching, visitors stay
with browsing and follow links, they
are twice as likely to find what they
seek. The implications of this for
the design of e-business sites are
enormous."
What
you call it isn't what they call it.
The other day, I was trying to find this
neat kid-friend of mine one of those
clicker thingies baseball umps use to keep
track of balls, strikes and outs. Being
Martian, I didn't know what it was called,
but on dozens of sites I tried
"clicker," "counter,"
"score keeper," and a variety of
other possibilities. Every search engine
attempt was fruitless. I wound up finding
one only because one site included a
listing of their categories. Under
"umpire gear" they had
"indicators!" If refining a
search takes repeated attempts to get the
right word, how persistent do you think
most customers are going to be before they
click away to one of your competitors?
Their
software doesn't think like your software.
To use any search function properly, you
have to think like the programming behind
it and come up with an effective search
query. Get the wrong parameters and you
get no results. Make your search too
narrow and you don't find what you're
looking for; too broad, and you're
overwhelmed with more results than you can
shake a stick at. Either way, from the
customer's point of view, the easiest
thing to do is say sayonara!
You
need an Advanced Search Option?
When the simple search produces nothing,
maybe it's time to make the customer
perform another click and load up yet
another page. Ha! (You knew I was kidding,
right?) What that amounts to is an
illogical form of punishment. Remember,
anytime you involve your visitor in the
“system,” that visitor is not
shopping! And for the average shopper
advanced search options are hard to
understand - and they generate bad
results, too. What you get is a shopper
who is confused and frustrated and maybe
even feeling stupid that they somehow
don’t know what they’re doing -
definitely not the right feeling for a
satisfying customer experience.
Most
of your visitors don't arrive at your site
thinking, "Boy, I really hope there's
a search box on the home page for
me!" In fact, most of your visitors
only turn to a searching feature when all
else fails them. And when that fails them,
too, you’ve lost them.
Think
about how you use a store.
When you first enter, do you make a
bee-line for the information booth or seek
out the first available sales person? I'd
bet you don't. Even if you have a good
idea what you want, you walk in, look
around, get a feel for the place, right?
You begin to move in a direction, looking
for cues, reading signs … in short, you
are shopping, in the broadest sense.
The
customer-centered e-tailer knows this and
also knows the best available searching
mechanism ever invented is the human
eye-brain combination known as "visual
scanning." Everybody does it
(whether or not they are aware of it), and
it is always the first line of attack. Bolded
or highlighted
text, vertically-aligned lists, A-Z site
indexes, site-maps, a logical progression
of links and pages - if these are
intelligently and thoughtfully employed,
they easily can handle almost every
customer’s searching needs.
Still
not sold? Dying to include an in-site
search engine? Then do it right:
