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Is your site search speedy enough?

Posted by Shaun RyanApril 10, 2012Ajax, Mobile, Newsletter, Site Search

In light of all the transformations we’re seeing on the web, one aspect must be kept top of mind: speed. Consumers’ expectations for pages to load quickly – whether on traditional or mobile sites – are increasing all the time. If your site performs too slowly, you risk losing visitors to your competitors, possibly for good. Also, Google takes page load time into account as part of their ranking algorithm, so a slower loading page can undermine your SEO efforts.

There is an abundance of research that shows the impact – both good and bad – that speed has on e-commerce sites. Gomez.com issued some startling statistics not long ago, such as:

The average online shopper expects web pages to load in two seconds or less, down from four seconds in 2006; after three seconds, up to 40% will abandon a site — Forrester Research
78% of consumers surveyed went to a competitor’s site due to poor performance at peak times — Compuware and Equation Research
71% of mobile web users expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile phone compared to the computer they use at home — up from 58% in 2009 — Compuware and Equation Research
Conversion rate increases 74% when page load time decreases from 8 to 2 seconds — Gomez real user monitoring data (33 major retailers, 3 million page views, search transaction)

The need for speed applies to all pages of your site, including site search and navigation – and luckily, there are a few things you can do to make your search operate faster and more efficiently, adding to a satisfying online experience. Some initial steps you can take are outlined below.

1. Optimize your indexing for faster search

A modern search index should be able to return relevant results in a fraction of a second. Some sites make the mistake of querying directly into their product database which is not optimized for speed, or relevance. This can slow down the process significantly.

2. Utilize Ajax search

Ajax search speeds up search queries by removing the need for a page-refresh each time a user conducts a follow-on query, selects a refinement, switches between grid and list views, reorders the results or clicks to the next page. In any of these instances, only the data that is needed is requested from the servers so the results appear much faster. (See our video tutorial on using Ajax search here.)

3. Address mobile sites

On a mobile commerce site, speed is even more important. The mobile site and the mobile search should only have the content and functionality that is absolutely necessary. SLI has developed a set of best practices for delivering mobile search (see our video tutorial here). One way to significantly improve load time of search pages is to use thumbnails instead of full size images.

4. Use content delivery networks

Content delivery networks bring the files (images, JavaScript, etc.) that are being delivered on the page, closer to the end users. This local caching can significantly speed up the delivery of those files, particularly for your visitors that are physically located far way from your servers. SLI uses Akamai for this.

5. Only include what’s necessary on your pages

Is everything on your page necessary? If you can have less on your page it will be quicker to load and the page may be simpler for your visitors to use. Conduct A/B tests to see the impact of removing elements from your page.

6. Compress your HTML

All modern browers support compression – this can be enabled on your webserver and it means the data is delivered considerably more quickly. This is an easy win.

7. Have sufficient hardware and bandwidth

Monitor how you are utilizing your machines (servers, switches, load balancers, etc.) and bandwidth, and have plenty of spare capacity so you can handle peak loads and any outages can be handled by machines that are operational.

If you have any questions about ways to speed up the search on your site, please contact your CSM, or email us at info@sli-systems.com.

Introducing Ajax Search: No Page Reloads, Faster Results

Posted by Shaun RyanNovember 8, 2009Ajax, Newsletter, Site Search

A recent article in Internet Retailer notes that speed sells on ecommerce sites. At the same time, consumers want more rich features that can, consequently, slow down their sites’ performance if not implemented correctly. I’m excited to introduce our new Learning Search with AJAX, which addresses both of these issues.

Our Learning Search with AJAX doesn’t require a page refresh each time a user conducts another search query, selects a refinement, switches between grid and list views, reorders the results or clicks to the next page. In any of these instances, only the data that is needed is requested from our servers so the results can appear much faster. This gives a snappier, more engaging search experience that makes me smile every time I use it – and hopefully it will have the same impact on your customers.

We’ve put a lot of work into making sure that the search still works as your customers expect it to. You can still use the back button on the browser to go the previous page. You can copy the URL and send it to a friend, and they’ll see the same page as you do. These simple, everyday features required careful design so that the AJAX search matches users’ perceptions of how a webpage works. Our AJAX search also works with our merchandising controls, meaning that banners, landing pages, tuning rules, and so on still work as they do on normal search results pages. Our AJAX search also works if you are using SLI for some or all of your navigation pages.

We have designed the AJAX search with web search engines in mind. Although Google has announced a proposal to crawl AJAX pages, they and other major search engines currently do not crawl such pages. SLI’s AJAX search includes a non-JavaScript version of the search and navigation pages – in other words, your existing landing pages and navigation pages are still available, so the crawlers from the web search engines will be able to access these, as will any of your visitors that have JavaScript disabled.

You can see how our AJAX search works on our customer’s site, Footwear etc. Some of our beta customers have seen significant positive impact in their sales following the rollout of Learning Search with AJAX.

AJAX search is currently in Beta testing but will be available as an upgrade to existing SLI clients starting in January 2010. Contact your Customer Success Manager about creating an AJAX version of your search. If you’re not a current SLI customer, we’ll still consider building you AJAX search at no cost, which qualified customers can try out for free for a month.

Ajax Search

Posted by Shaun RyanOctober 10, 2006Ajax, Site Search

There is growing interest in using Ajax with search.

Google is experimenting with it at Searchmash.com. Microsoft are using it on Windows Live Search and Amazon are using Ajax on A9. Eurekster are using Ajax to allow users to change the search results on Swikis and Snap are using it to display search suggestions.

Ajax technology allows the search engines to send and receive information in the background and display the new information without refreshing the page. This allows features such as infinite scrolling, where more results are fetched in the background and added to the existing results, either when you get close to the bottom or when you click to see the next page. You can also fetch more information about results when you mouse over them or click on a portion of them. For example Ask do this, mouse over the binoculars icon on their search results and they show a screen shot of the page.

We first looked at this type of technology back in 2000. Back then we were using Flash rather than Ajax (the project was called Gordon – we thought it would save every one of us), but the concept was the same. The Flash code would render the search results and make requests to the server for more information. This would enable features such as continuous scrolling and showing additional information when you moused over a search result or a search suggestion. We even had search results and suggestions flying in and out of the page as you did different searches.

We found that it was fairly easy to create these cool features but they added little, if anything to the search experience for the end user. There is quite a lot of risk in creating non-standard user interfaces. The main risk is that too many people won’t understand what’s happening and the search experience will be degraded. Microsoft’s Live search did have infinite scrolling when it was in beta but it is no longer there. I think the real opportunity here is not to create new user interfaces for the search results but rather to speed things up by not having to refresh the whole page and potentially by making subtle improvements to the existing user interface.

It will be interesting to see whether any Ajax powered features will become common place in site search. This is one area we will be keeping a close eye on.

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