Search (Including Faceted Search)
About this book
You can’t sell a product that your customers can’t find. Your site must accommodate all types of searches and return relevant results for categories, products, and product characteristics. Search is a critical element of building a profitable website. In our recent e-commerce usability study, 83% of users searched on one or more sites.This 148-page report contains 62 design recommendations based on our usability research. Discussions and 130 screenshot illustrations supplement the findings.Even though some of the design guidelines are specific to searching for products, many of the guidelines apply to all forms of web searches, including general websites and intranets.Topics Exploiting search to meet customer needs Feeling for breadth or depth of the site's product selection Quickly locate a product category or something specific Fallback option to site navigation Narrow options Return to an item previously located Customer queries Search queries, what people type Query length Within site searches versus web-wide searches Best practices for search on e-commerce websites Placement of search Accommodating different lengths and types of searches Interpreting the query Narrowing options Returning useful results Advanced and scoped searches Presenting search results Sorting results Narrowing product choices Guided navigation versus faceted searchResearch MethodThe information in these reports is based on two separate rounds of e-commerce studies, including: One-on-one usability testing Diary-based longitudinal study EyetrackingRepresentative users tested 206 e-commerce websites. The studies took place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and China (Hong Kong).