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

[Alex Bainbridge]

>> Approximately 10-25% of users who used a 'search box' failed to
>> locate hotels that matched their requirements solely due to poor
>> error message display and implementation,

>Does that mean the success rate was about 75%?

No - as the tasks in the usabiltiy testing were not distributed in
proportion to their real world distribution. Also, with 12 users, I would
not generalise to create a percentage pass / fail - as I don't have
sufficient data for that.

>Or was the success rate lower due to other types of search failure?

We conducted both known item searching (specific hotels) and wider searches
(cities and regions).

Yes there were other failures, that we only saw on search rather than on
categorisation, BUT I would put this down to how websites have implemented
search - rather than the concept of search itself.

Its difficult to poorly categorise on a hotel reservation website (as it can
be done geographically) but very easy to implement a poor search.


alex

Alex Bainbridge
www.travelucd.com