In a recent blog, we talked about how a home page is the ‘front door’ to your website, yet many people don’t arrive there initially – typically they will have searched in Google and been directed to the most relevant page on your website instead.
What happens though if somebody does arrive at your home page and is on the look out for something in particular? They could search through your menu options to guide them to the ‘right place’ or, if there’s one available, they could use the search function on your website.
Not every website includes a search function. If you’ve got a fairly simple website with a single page or just a few pages, it’s unlikely that you will invest in a search function – hoping instead that visitors will use your navigation tree. At the other end of the scale, large online retailers, such as Amazon and Marks & Spencer, depend on their search function for sales. Media sites are also likely to include an onsite search function – as visitors jump on to find particular news articles.
As always, keeping a potential customer engaged and preventing them clicking away is vital – so it makes sense to make their journey within your website as smooth as possible. We discussed it before, but the majority of website visitors nowadays are fairly savvy and understand how a navigation tree works. As long as you make it easy to navigate, they will probably spend a few moments looking for that product or service. If your website is complicated and your navigation tree is complicated, then a search function could be vital.
The main issue with online search is that we have all been ‘spoilt’ by using Google. The tech behind Google is incredible and it really is a phenomenal search engine. Most of us find what we are looking for within seconds and that’s even after inputting some fairly ‘dodgy’ text which has typically been inputted quickly with a scattering of typos. There are very few website search functions which can replicate Google – which can sometimes lead to a little frustration - but that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful.
Many website search functions apply autocomplete, which will have a good ‘guess’ at what you are searching for as you type in the letters and the majority will also accommodate spelling mistakes. It’s about understanding what people might be searching for and appreciating that they might use abbreviations and a ‘z’ instead of a ‘s’ in some words and vice versa. Often when people type in a search, they will include words such as ‘a’ ‘and’ and ‘the’ and the engine behind this search will typically remove these words from the search.
Often people just ‘brain dump’ long form into a search. They might not just search for a ‘blue dress’ it could be ‘a size 10 cotton midi blue dress’ etc. In this case, the search function will ‘chunk’ this up.
It's also worth looking at what titles you are including on pieces of content. If people are searching for words which are in the body content of an article, it’s worth including those words in the title too. It is also possible to include a ‘boost’ on some words.
It's important to understand that adding a search function to your website is a long-term project; it won’t be perfect straightaway. Like Google, you will learn from what visitors input into your search. In fact, the search function could provide you with invaluable user data – such as what are people searching for most often, what phrases are they using etc.
You could also use the data to adapt what your business offers. If there are frequent searches for something you don’t offer – then perhaps it’s time to add it to your inventory? Or perhaps somebody is searching for an article or blog on a particular subject which you haven’t covered yet – this could be the signal to produce that content.
While the majority of businesses benefit from their Google rankings and SEO, including a website search function can also provide data which can feed back into this. For example, what visitors search for on your website will probably be what they are searching for on Google. In which case, you can use this data to decide which search phrases and words to invest in. This information could also be used more broadly from a marketing perspective. If people are searching for particular items, perhaps they can be included in some sort of offer?
Depending on how much you wish to invest in website search, you could include persona detection, which will help you to lead a website visitor in the right direction. If, for instance, you are on an online pet shop and all your searches have involved cats to date and you search for a collar then, in theory, this will help to put cat collars ahead of dog collars in your search result.
There is another approach to searching, where you include taxonomy filters within the search function. We’ve probably all used these when looking for clothes online – when we click on our size and preferred colour for a garment etc.
If you make the decision to include a search function on your website, then it does involve some investment – both in time and money to make it work effectively for you. The majority of open source website providers offer the option to include a search on a website – but most outsource this to a specialist provider, of which there are a number including Solr, Coveo, Lucene and Azure.
If your website search function works efficiently and effectively and visitors easily find what they are looking for then it will lead to positive and continued interactions between you and your customers and potential customers.
If you want to know more about website search, then get in touch on tel: 020 3397 3222.