Back to Basics: Tips for How to Get the Most from Site Search – Part 2

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In our August newsletter, we outlined some basic steps to make your existing site search even better for your visitors. We have more good advice in store for you this month, with ideas that can make your search feature easier to find and use – which, of course, increases the chances that visitors will locate what they need, and even make purchases at your site.

• Position the search box “above the fold,” or high up on the webpage so that visitors don’t need to scroll down to find it – data shows that people who search rather than browse are 2-3 times as likely to convert, so encourage them to use your site search by making it easy to spot at first glance.
• Test different positions for the search box, and identify which positions generate the most search traffic – our customer Black Forest Décor did this, and moved its search box from the right-hand upper corner of its site – a common placement for the search box – to the center of the page. They also made other changes to the search box, such as increasing its size and using bolder colors to make it stand out. This all added up to a big jump in average revenue from site search.
• If you use text like “enter search here” in your search box, use JavaScript code so that the term disappears as soon as people click on the box or start typing within it – otherwise, search users have to take steps to delete the term, or they need to overwrite it with their search term – and this can increase the likelihood of spelling errors and poor search results. Generally speaking, you want to avoid forcing extra steps on your visitors – search should be as painless as possible.
• Consider putting the cursor focus in the search box – in other words, code the page so that the cursor is automatically in the box, and visitors can start typing their keywords immediately – our customer Surveillance Video is a good example. As you can see when you visit their site, it’s fast and easy to start a search. Just remember that if you do place the focus on search, do so only on those pages where search is the primary box. If there is another form on the box that a visitor clicks on, and the visitor starts typing into that box while the page is still loading, then the focus will switch to the search box while they’re typing – which can be confusing.
• Add auto complete, which suggests possible terms when visitors type the first few letters of a keyword – it’s especially useful for hard-to-spell searches, and saves time by requiring fewer keystrokes.

Do you have additional ideas for simple ways to make search better? If so, we’d love to hear them – just drop us a line and let us know.