Frustrating Search Leads to Questions About End Users
November 4, 2013
The age old question of “Why Is Website Search So Hard to do Well” was brought up in a recent article with that title published on Biznology.com. The author, Mike Moran, has noticed an interesting trend: more companies are working on improving their website search. He points out that the group of users who are likely to actively engage with a site through searching seems like they would be likely customers.
Besides the obvious reason that users who search have already been disappointed by the site’s navigation to some degree, the author explores other reasons users have been frustrated with search engines on individual Web sites.
He continues:
But it’s more than that. If you think about it, they are often searching for information that is harder to find–that’s why they fail when they are navigating in the first place. But the biggest issue is expectations. Google sets the searcher’s expectations sky-high because searchers think they are good at search and Google has the comparatively easy job of finding good results among hundreds or thousands of sites all trying to create the right answer. On your website, only one team–maybe just one person–is responsible for that page on your site. It’s unlikely that you have several really good answers for each search result the way you do on the Internet.
It would be interesting to pair his thoughts with data about when users turn to search. Is it always after attempting to navigate the site’s design and organization? And which type of user is more likely to become a customer?
Megan Feil, November 04, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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