Forum Moderators: not2easy
I've been eagerly reading it over the last two days and was surprised to see at the beginning of Chapter 7:
Most sites need to have a prominently displayed search box on the Home page.
Really?
Far from having a search box on the home page of my site, I don't even have a search facility on the level one pages. Only on the level two pages and below.
This is because I fully expect a large proportion of users to see search, search badly, assume my site has nothing to offer them and leave the site.
I've watched a lot of non-technical people search using Google etc. and it gives me no confidence that most people have the first clue as to how to go about searching. (I'm not blaming them, they probably don't spend all their life on the web. I'm rubbish at skiing for the same reason).
Do you have more confidence in Joe User's ability to search? Are you so confident that you have a search box on your home page?
This advice was also in the first edition of DMMT.
I also use user-friendly design techniques on the main page body: i.e easy to read at-a-glance, above the fold, browse links focused on what visitors are looking for on the top level pages.
You say you only put search on second level pages, but don't mention that these pages could be the first pages visitors see. Hiding search on top level pages assumes that visitors arrive at the homepage and proceed in an orderly fashion from there down into deeper levels. I don't generally see this behaviour on my SEO'd sites.
Jared Spool originally started this "search is bad" theory, and there is an element of truth in it. I would re-phrase his advice as: search is bad if you return bad search results. See Peter Morville's article In defense of Search [digital-web.com] - and have a quick look at the amazon and ebay homepages ;)
They seem to like to browse through the different categories instead, maybe because they aren't looking for something specific.
However when it comes to content in the forums they use it quite frequently, maybe because posts disappears pretty fast down the list.
I think that search should be included on a website, but it doesn't have to be very advanced. Google offer a search service if one doesn't like to set up an inhouse solution.
If your site is designed correctly you dont need a search as the user will understand where to go if it went to a wrong place.
If you have a really big website I guess a search will be handy afterall. Problems stays that the result of searches do mostly suck.
Cheers,
Bastiaan
If your site is designed correctly you dont need a search as the user will understand where to go if it went to a wrong place.
Well, this is precisely the lines on which I had been thinking which is why my site has a very strong navigation structure and consistently repeated navigational elements on all pages.
But, as I've learned - at least from Krug's comments - different people have their own idiosyncratic ways of using the web and some people - non-techies I would guess - are particularly search-oriented.
The same kind of people who walk into a department store and instead of seeking out the floorplan which tells you which departments are on which floor, immediately seek out an assistant and ask them instead.
Personally, I can't imagine not at least trying to figure it out for myself before having to depend on someone else, but it's undeniable that some people take the opposite approach.
In any case, I have implemented search on the front page, where it was absent before and I have yet to see any significant changes in visitor retention either up or down.
I have an alphabetic index and a categorised index on each of my two main sites, very few people use search - but it is there for those who can not find what they want in another way.
Many sites use a hybrid of both styles. You may choose one way of organizing the documents, when another way makes just as much sense. You may think it makes the most sense to categorize articles by topic, but I might be interested in grouping them by author. If you have a collection of documents that can be logically organized in more than one way, then a search facility is warranted.
One of the worst organization methods I've ever dealt with was a collection of 1000-ish articles that had a drill-down navigation by date. You'd choose "Articles", "Legal", "1998", "October", "13", then you'd see a page showing the legal articles logged for 1998/10/13. With no search facility available, it was practically impossible to find anything on a topic of interest.
some people - non-techies I would guess - are particularly search-oriented.
Not fair. To search or not to search says nothing about the techiness of a user. I do PLENTY of searching, because it's usually the fastest, smartest way to find what I want.
Pay attention to the world. Search is the dominant paradigm of information retreival. Browsing and following links to drill down a topic tree is a nice way to show context and place topics in a general-to-specific hierarchy. But not all information fits into that model.
Web users are not Taxonomists.
I have been involved in designing human-computer interfaces for many many years. There are no right and wrong answers, but as a general hint, test your interface (web site in this case) on someone who doesn't know the interface, or computers. Children can be useful, as can elderly parents, and wives (tongue in cheek generalisations, please don't flame me <g>)
Matt
Not fair.
Errmm... alright, it was only a guess. I couldn't say with certainty what particular set of attributes makes a person more or less inclined to use search.
I very rarely arrive on a new site and go straight to search because I want to see that I am capable of navigating the site without having to resort to "teleporting" from one page to another which won't help me form any impression of how the site is linked together.
Amazon is an exception, but then, it's a vast product catalogue and I'm not even sure that you can do it by navigation alone. Wikipedia is also an exception. But I wouldn't even think of using search on the Skype website or the Nokia website or A List Apart.
All I was pointing out is that - though I've never considered the possibility before - some people couldn't care less about how the site is structured and whether they are smart enough to figure out the navigation in the shortest time possible, they just want to find the information.
As yet, still no significant changes to visitor rentention / repeat visits or any other statistic, even though about three percent of visitors are now using the search box on the homepage.
What I mean is, for my site the software unfortunately does NOT attract that much attention, so I put it at the bottom of the main page. This I noticed by studying my stats (provided by the software), and although putting the searchbox closer to the top results in more searches, I can tell the number of searches is below par for the location, if that makes sense.
So it has been my experience to put the searchbox as close to the visitor as their interest demands. If their interest is not that high, a direct link would suffice (notice how most forums are set up, I personally find this an adequate use of a search function).
I guess it boils down to that only a true search engine should put the box in their face, but that it adds functionality and interactivity to your site while it enhances its usefulness merely with its presence, there is no doubt a searchbox helps.
Peace and hopes.
