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

[rich at richardwiggins.com]

If your site doesn't offer search, then I accept that zero percent of your
customers will do search.  :-)  (Actually, some percent will go to Google
and do a site:clothingstore.com search.)

I can conceive of a site that doesn't need search.  I'd define that as a
site that doesn't have any links on it.  So if you launch
gettysburgaddress.com, and all it has on it is one page with the text of the
Gettysburg Address, then you don't need a search box.

Jakob Nielsen argues that every site ought to have a search box on the home
page.  Not a link to the search service -- a real search box.  (He also
lists inflexible search engines, and the failure to have a Best Bets feature
in your search, as one of the Top 10 Web Design Mistakes of 2002.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html )

The more complex your site becomes, the more obvious the need to have a
search box.  If your home page and each of the tiers beneath has an average
of, say, 20 links, 20**3 is 8000 links to look through.  You can group and
label and categorize to Da Vinci levels, it's still a lot of choices.

A site that's really simple -- a brochureware site with a home page and 5
linked pages and no tiers beyond -- probably doesn't need search.

A university, a Ford Motor Company, a General Electric, an HP, an Amazon, a
Linksys, a NY Times... they all need a search box on the home page, and they
all need Best Bets or equivalent.

I guess the way to measure whether search might help your clothing site
would be to set up two versions, one with a search box on the home page (and
Google as the search engine, and Best Bets before Google hits) and the other
with no search as it is today.  Then, have one group of uncoached guinea
pigs try a set of defined tasks on one site, and another group try the
other. 

What were the clothing sites you tested that worked well sans search, by the
way?  

/rich


On Tue, 18 Feb 2003 12:52:57 -0800 (PST), "Jared M. Spool" wrote:

> 
> Richard Wiggins wrote:
> 
> >The point is that a certain percent of your customers will do searches. 
If
> >you're Amazon and you have a million customers a day, and let's say "only"
> >20% of your customers search, that's 200,000 customers to keep happy.
> 
> You see, this is where I run into problems.
> 
> Peter M. mentioned a recent study we did of people shopping for clothing 
> where two of the top three sites didn't have a search engine, yet users 
> rated the sites highly, purchased more from those sites than from most of 
> the other sites, rated the search engine highly (!), and told us that they 
> were very satisified with the site.
> 
> So, on those two sites, 100% of the users were happy even though they 
> weren't given the opportunity to search. Much happier than when using most 
> of the sites that *did* provide Search.
> 
> Therefore, I don't buy the "a certain percent of your customers will do 
> searches" argument. That's where I'm at with this.
> 
> Again, I'm not saying those two sites *shouldn't* have search. I'm just
not 
> willing to buy the argument that you *always* should provide it.
> 
> Jared
> 
> 
> Jared M. Spool
> User Interface Engineering
> <a
href="http://mail.richardwiggins.com/jump/http://www.uie.com">http://www.uie.com</a>    jspool at uie.com
> 
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_____________________________________________________

Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on the Internet
rich at richardwiggins.com  http://richardwiggins.com