[Sigia-l] ROI/Value of Search Engine Design - Resources?

[Beth Mazur]

>Clearly the question of what percent of users start by searching is a
>proposition that needs testing. 

To paraphrase my usability friends, I'm sure the answer is "it depends."
I don't know if it matters to me what the stats are even for some 
peer-reviewed journal-quality testing if their environment is nothing 
like mine.

Just for an anecdotal datapoint, in January we had somewhere in the ballpark
of 1M visits and 100K searches. Our audience tends to be less savvy, and 
our site is not e-commerce. 

Your mileage may indeed vary.

Beth Mazur
IDblog:  http://idblog.org