Analyse your site search to increase ROI

Why is it important to analyse your own site search?

Knowing what people search for on your site is very, very interesting.

After all, these people are already on your website. And they’re probably using your search feature because they can’t immediately find what they’re looking for. At least, that’s what we usually notice during user tests.

What do you have to do?

1. Make sure you can analyse the search queries on your website
   Earlier, we talked about how to hook up your own site search to Google Analytics.
   Of course there are other tools out there, but they’re often expensive and quite frankly not as good.
2. Analyse the list of most frequently used search words a couple of times per year
   Take into account spelling and wording variations and group these together. People looking for a ‘gun license’, ‘handgun license’ and ‘gun permit’ are all looking for the same thing. The filters in Google Analytics come in quite handy here.

Typical discoveries when analysing a search feature

• People look for things that appear to be hard to find through the navigation structure
• They look for things that aren’t on your website
• They type in old product names and even your competitors’ product names
• They don’t use the same words you do
• People can’t spell very well… at all
  
  How can that help you to increase your ROI?

This article is about search, user research, Usability.

Analyse your own site search with Google Analytics

Why analyse your own site search data?

• What people use your search feature for says something about your navigation, homepage and overview pages. If those are all perfectly fine, chances are that very few people will use your search feature.
• Insight into what people are searching for on your website. Which words do they use? Do they use other words than the ones you’re using? Are there typical spelling errors lots of visitors make? Are they looking for things that aren’t on your website? Etc.

3 ways to analyse your site search data

1. Your content management system or search software has a built-in tool to analyse the search feature. In that case, you are very lucky. Unless of course it’s a crappy tool.
2. You’re best buds with the IT crowd and they’re more than happy to make you a tool to analyse your search data.
3. You use Google Analytics to analyse your website’s visitor behaviour. If that’s the case, do read on. (If you don’t have Google Analytics yet: make sure you do.)

How do you hook up your search feature to Google Analytics?

This article is about log files, search, Usability.

Faceted search: 4 design tips

Faceted search: when and why?

Faceted search helps people to look for things based on criteria that are important for them.

In classic web navigation, the website determines the order of the choices. But this hierarchical structure is too limited for sites with a large product range or information offering. Different people often have different criteria in searching for the same thing.

Example: holiday homes

When I’m looking for a holiday home, a swimming pool is essential. For you it might be that pets are allowed or that it’s no more than 10 miles from a supermarket. All these things are important, but they’re not important for everyone.

The best way to solve this: faceted search. Sure, you could also go for an extremely advanced search feature, but I’d advise against it.

In this article we’ll discuss 4 design aspects of faceted search that are crucial for good usability.

Where do you put the search filters?

This article is about design, faceted search, in-page navigation, Usability.

5 tips to show users where they are on your website

Your homepage is not always the first page people see. Lots of visitors find your site via Google and immediately end up on a detail page. Or maybe they’ve clicked a link on another website. A link that doesn’t necessarily mention your website’s name.

Letting people know which site they’re on and where they are on that site is pretty basic usability stuff, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

1. Logo and company name in top left corner

Put your logo in the top left corner. If your logo doesn’t contain your company name, put your name directly underneath the logo. Do this on every page. That way, people immediately know whose website they’re on.

Don’t think putting your logo on the right side will make you special. Sure, you’ll be different, but not in a way people appreciate. You’re just making it harder for them to know which website they’re on.

Ogilvy puts its logo in the bottom right corner. Because that’s not where people expect it to be, it will take them longer to see it.

Not mentioning your name or logo at all is of course not the greatest idea either.

Without a logo or name in the top left corner, it’s not easy for visitors to know they’re on the website of the Museum for Industrial Archeology and Textile (MIAT) in Ghent.

4 more tips to tell people where they are on your website

This article is about breadcrumb, crumb trail, navigation, title tag, Usability.

Useless overview pages at deSingel

Although research shows that users spend 80% of their time above the page fold, a lot of websites don’t really take that into account.

The overview pages on the website of Antwerp art campus deSingel give the user an overview of, well, not very much. Except for a truly huge page title (if you’ve ever seen a bigger one, please let me know) there’s not a lot to see really.

Ah, but there’s a tiny link ‘Topical exhibitons’ just visible above the page fold! Yes, there is. Go ahead and click it. Nothing happens.

If you want to see the current architecture exhibitions, you’re going to have to scroll down.

Now there’s nothing wrong with scrolling, but on a page like this the current exhibition(s) should at least be partly visible above the page fold.

Why use up all that space for one creatively hyphenated word?

Thank you, Jan Seurinck for pointing this one out.

This article is about overview page, page fold, Usability.

Extremely advanced search

Finding the right holiday home isn’t easy.

And the advanced search feature on Iha.com doesn’t make it any easier.

Then again, maybe it’s handy if you’re looking for a lakeside cottage in the mountains with a private swimming pool and sauna. Around the corner from an 18 hole golf course.

Maybe.

This article is about search, Usability.

Navigation versus search

Is good navigation important?

A client recently asked me: “Navigation, isn’t that a bit old hat? I mean, this is the time of Google. Doesn’t everybody just search?”

No, they don’t. Good navigation and good links are vital for the success of a website. A search feature is an added bonus, sure. But if you have one, it has to be as good as Google or even better.

Less than 5% uses the search feature

Google might be insanely popular but that doesn’t mean the search feature on your website is too.

On the contrary.

When we do visitor behaviour analysis (read: Google Analytics) we often see that the search feature is rarely used by more than 5% of a site’s total number of visitors. On our blogs the number of searchers is even lower: around 1,5%. On the website of a Flemish province we’re working for it’s just below 5%.

What else do we know about search?

This article is about search, Information architecture, Usability.

The people at Lego are slightly paranoid…

At Lego.com, people with perfectly innocent names like Massimo or Laetitia are considered perverts.

As soon as your chosen user name contains certain, shall we say ‘improper’, letter combinations Lego delicately points this out to you. And then forces you to choose a different user name.

It’s good to be careful. Just don’t be too careful.

And ahem, Lego… if you’re really that worried about your squeaky clean image, maybe you should pick a figure with a less suggestively crooked smile. Just sayin’.

Many thanks to Anthony Bosschem of Youreca, who put us on to this beauty.

This article is about funny, Usability.

12 tips for the perfect description tag

After reading ‘Description tag: what is it and why is it so important?’ you know what a description tag is and why it matters so much.

But how do you write a good description tag? These 12 tips should point you in the right direction.

1. Use no more than 155 characters

Google shows only the first 160 characters of the description tag. After that, it simply adds an ellipsis (…). If you want to play it safe, don’t use more than 155 characters. Don’t forget: spaces and punctuation marks count as characters too.

2. Use keywords you want to score with for that page

Google only shows the description tag if there’s a sufficiently strong content relation between the description tag, the user’s query and the content of the page.

If you want Google to show your description tag, be sure to include the page’s keyword(s) in it.

10 more tips to write the perfect description tag

This article is about conversion, copywriting, description-tag, Information architecture, Search engine optimisation.

This route is not available at the moment

Route planner Mappy had a strange message for me last week.

What do you mean, this route is not available?
Has the road gone missing?
Was it destroyed by an earthquake?
A tsunami?
Has it been temporarily moved to a parallell universe?
Help!

Related articles

• Gender error
• 7 tips for user-friendly error messages

This article is about error messages, Usability.