Today we’ll share a few more tips from our new white paper “The Big Book of Site Search Tips” (available for free download). As we mentioned last week, the full paper includes nearly 80 tips and suggestions for ways to make small improvements to your web site search to see big results. Here are a few tips related to page lay-out and format we hope you’ll find helpful:
- Have clear and specific product and content titles in the search results – Titles should be accurate and descriptive about the content your visitors will see when they click on the results. If titles are not accurate, your visitors may not click on a result that is otherwise relevant, or they may click on it only to find that it didn’t contain what they were looking for. If this happens too often, they’re likely to abandon the search, as well as your site.
- Have consistent image sizes – Search results will look cleaner, and be more readable and easy to scan if the text is not disrupted by images of different sizes. If search results are shown in a grid view, consistently sized images will produce a regular pattern and a better looking page.
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- Show the total number of results so visitors know how many are available – This helps them determine how far into the results they want to click. Additionally, if the search term yields a large number of results it may signal to them that they need to narrow their search – or click a refinement option.
- Have a mobile version of your search results – The mobile version of Amazon.com is not much more than a search page. The number of people accessing the web via mobile devices is growing. On the small window of a mobile device you don’t have room to offer the navigational and promotional options that you have on your normal site. A mobile search is a vital part of any mobile site and will have fewer refinements, sorting and viewing options. In this case, it’s extremely important to offer highly relevant results.
