Have you ever considered optimizing the usability of your site-search? If so, first consider why visitors would use the search box on your site. I can see two general reasons why they would use it:

1. Right when the visitor gets the urge to find some content, they have already decided that using a site-search, opposed to clicking and reading around, will find that content faster.
2. The user tried reading around and clicking to find that content, but gave up because they couldn’t find that content (fast enough) so they started using the site’s search feature.

There are three types of visitors when it comes to site search: search-dominant, browse-dominate and a blend of the two. Search-dominant users think they can get better results faster from searching the site. The fact that visitors have less time to look through all the potential websites to which Google points them and the ever-increasing amount of content in them supports why this type of visitor is becoming more prevalent all the time. The second visitor type is probably motivated to click and read though a site more than searching because they know where to find the content and think they can do so fast enough for their needs. Maybe they value the experience of exploring or perhaps they’re just ‘Feeling Lucky.’ The third type probably thinks they can find some content faster using a site-search and other content faster by browsing.

Sometimes, when new users come to your site, they’ll use the search feature, and in becoming familiar with the navigation on the pages to which your site-search directs them, they will become better at knowing where to find content on your site in the future. Therefore, returning users may use the site’s search feature less than new users. This probably means that your site’s overall usability and information architecture is effective.

My colleague, Joe, blogged about an increasing phenomenon in which users who have arrived on your site from search engines will then use your site’s search box, but will often search for terms so broad, it defies your understanding. He said that users may be using more precise (‘long-tail’) searches on Google to find your site and using broad search terms once on your site because they expect that it’s Google that needs the more precise search term. This makes sense because Google has billions of pages in its index and your site may only have 50 total pages.

In order to optimize the usability of your site-search, you have to get in the visitors’ heads. Sometime this is extremely difficult. This difficulty can be overcome, however, by reading usability reports and any psychological reports remotely related to this subject.

So, when you consider site-search optimization, realize that search engine traffic to your site (SEO), your own site-search and your site’s navigation are all inter-related. When you adjust one of these items, another one may be have to be adjusted in order to give your site the best usability possible.

Consider these suggestions:

• Assume the user may want to use site-search on your site, especially if it’s any larger than a typical ‘brochure site.’ Therefore, be conscious of this and provide this feature.
• Always seek to create a better site-search experience for your users by comparing the terms searched for against the results your website returns. Secondly, since you know the content of your website well, analysis of site-search usability will probably be much more reliable if you use small-group testing methods composed of those not familiar with your site.
• Learn and use your analytics services.
• Don’t assume that all visitors arrive on your site from the home page. Also, don’t assume that your home page receives the most traffic (you can validate this for your site using analytics services). Place your search box on every page, in a standard location (usually top right or top center) and make the search box stand out some way.
• Always analyze your site-search analytics (and adjust your site as necessary): compare percentages of visitors that use site-search with those who do not; see if visitors are leaving your site right after they see the search results, or if they stay, how long they stay; compare the amount of pages site-search users view (known as depth) with that of the site’s visitors’ average depth to see if your entire site needs work or the just site-search’s relevancy of results needs your attention. Feel free to come up with additional areas of site-search usability analysis.

I would like to share a few usability resources I have found that can quickly get you on your way to understanding your visitors and employing Best Practices for usability design.

www.useit.com
Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a patent holder and renowned usability guru. You can find invaluable reports as well as all the content from his free AlertBox newsletter.

Don’t Make Me Think (Book)
This book provides an easy to follow, non-technical, yet revealing perspective into what goes on in visitors’ minds when they see your site, from the first impressionable seconds to the interaction with navigation elements minutes later. It details many case studies and guides you with Best Practices for designing for visitors so that you won’t have to teach them to use your site–they’ll know instinctively and will not have to think. It’s a short, but thought-provoking read with suggestions that you will soon want to implement.

www.uxmatters.com
This organization produces an e-zine about usability and design issues. Some of the content is a theoretical, but you can take something away from every article. This site contains a glossary of usability-related terms and abbreviations, conference reviews and access to archived articles. Though they have been around for just two years, there is a lot of useful content.

www.usability.gov
See your tax dollars at work. Uncle Sam has compiled research and guidelines for developing usable web sites. They include topics on everything from planning to designing to testing and refining your website. You can also find newsletters, articles and events related to site usability. They also sell their Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines book, which includes contributions from ‘experts from across government, industry, and academia.’

www.challishodge.com
A blogger with a large archive talks about ‘the user experience, design and strategy’ while applying news of current events in a broad range of topics from art to nanotechnology to Word of Mouth Marketing. In addition to the informative and interesting blog posts, lists of organizations, other blog sites, books and resources can also be found.

www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htm
Poynter Institute runs tests on visitors’ eye movement behavior while reading multimedia and news-related websites. This site, as well as http://eyetrack.poynter.org/, gathers the findings and helps you understand what design decisions can help your site visitors look, and then hopefully click, where you want them to. Though this information is specifically pertaining to news websites, you should be able to apply the findings about images, font size and information recall to your design.

www.webstyleguide.com
Originally published by Yale University, Webstyleguide.com presents a logical, prioritized approach to Best Practices in web design with an emphasis on user-centered design. The guidelines start with a discussion on the design process and design goals, and continue with interface, site and page design, and then delves into visual elements and editorial style.

psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/default.htm
This resource’s goal is to assist you in designing a website for user, and does so by combining and presenting knowledge gained from many researchers on human interaction with interfaces. The Software Usability Research Laboratory, the laboratory responsible for this site’s content, includes research from the previously mentioned Poynter University and Neilson. In this resource, along with its sister site, surl.org, much of the text is supported by parenthetical notations so you can find the original publication of a researcher’s findings. Though this site was last updated in March 2003, and some of the suggestions are no longer in use, surl.org’s newsletter is current as of July 2007.

Everyone could benefit from making their site more visitor-friendly. User experience matters. Here are a few examples to illustrate why.

Scenario #1a: Users can’t find what they’re looking for on your site. The content on your site should be quickly found by your visitors and without a hassle. You don’t want your visitors spending half of their time on your site looking for content because they may then spend less time absorbing that information and more time remembering that they had a bad experience. Consequently, navigation or organizational frustrations will likely cloud their perceived value of your site.

Now consider scenario #1b: A particular visitor read and enjoyed some content in a section of your website. He left your site without bookmarking the section’s main page because he didn’t have the time to do so. (This happens to me. I don’t bookmark every informative page I find, and even if I did, I may not want to spend the time to search my bookmarks for that page.) Upon returning to your site, the visitor uses your site navigation to quickly find the section he is looking for. The process used to find that page was fast because your site’s navigation was clear and well though out. The user didn’t have to think about the various ways information on your site could be organized, choose the one that made most sense to him and then try to navigate through the site accordingly - a hit or miss option, to say the least. Instead, a logical organization scheme (information architecture) was provided and the user’s navigation was seamless – and therefore positive.

If the site owner wanted to know whether the returning visitor came from another site, a search engine or directly (i.e. clicking a bookmark in their browser or typing the web page’s address in their browser), Google Analytics and/or cookies could easily help.

Scenario #2: Your on-site search functionality doesn’t return accurate/comprehensive results. Imagine that a visitor to your site, after reading and enjoying your content on a particular topic, returns to your site in search of a specific paragraph on a specific page. The visitor does not remember how she found that particular page or article, and tries to use your on-site search functionality (the search box usually on the top right of the pages) to locate the content only to become annoyed and frustrated when that search functionality returns no relevant or close results. There are many reasons why your site’s search functionality failed, maybe you’ve embedded that content in a picture or in an Adobe Flash file - so it’s not crawl-able by external search engines or your site’s internal search functionality. Or maybe the search-feature itself is a poor one and its keyword search and retrieval capabilities are weak.

In addition to your site’s search functionality, the user could have attempted to use the browser’s own search functionality which will only search the page that the user is currently on. (The browser’s search functionality can usually be invoked by the Find command in the Edit menu.)

If you are using Google Analytics, and SiteSearch is configured, you can see reports of everything that visitors search for (and analyze the bounce rate for each search phrase). Google Analytics, by itself, cannot report when visitors employ the browser’s search functionality.

In this scenario, I would first highly recommend that the image be changed to text and use CSS for formatting/styling if need be. If that is too much work, my other suggestion would be to add alternate text to that image immediately. This provides a degree of SEO-friendliness and accessibility, though it will not solve the search problems. Another option could be to use text that’s automatically replaced with a flash version of it (aka, IFR). This technique, pioneered by Mike Davidson, is used by the likes of Nike, ABCNews and others, and while providing more control over typography while maintaining SEO-friendliness, it will not allow the user to find content using the browser’s own search functionality (unless JavaScript is turned off in their browser). Lastly, if your site’s search functionality provides less-than usable results, try using Google’s customized site search or removing on-search all together.

Hopefully these scenarios will tempt you to consider UXO (user experience optimization), and its benefits to your visitors and your word-of-mouth advertising reach.