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The advent of the Web has forever changed the global business landscape, where a company's website is often its most valuable tool for generating revenue. For many Internet-based businesses, it's their only tool. As such, going beyond basic navigation to provide site visitors with a direct path to the information they seek is paramount.
According to Jupiter Media Metrix, when navigation attempts fail, 50% of site visitors will turn to search. It would seem that despite best efforts to improve site navigation, not even the best directory structures enable users to quickly and easily find the information they're seeking. Yet traditionally, site search technologies haven't fared much better, with Jupiter reporting as much as an 85% failure rate.
Put simply, web users have matured considerably, which means they demand a frictionless experience and are less patient with sites that can't deliver on these expectations. The saying "The competition is only a click away" has never been more applicable.
Site search deficiencies not only negatively impact conversions and site revenue, but they also harm a company's brand reputation. Consider, for example, what happens when a person gets zero results when searching for the term "hamburger" on a fast food restaurant chain's website. Multiply this failure by the number of site visitors conducting this basic search, and suddenly you have a company that appears as though it doesn't know its own business.
Thus, adding competent site search capabilities into the mix is not only a means for reaping incremental revenue, but also an absolute necessity in delivering a top-notch user experience. Key benefits for advanced site search technology include:
1. Provide users with the ability to pinpoint desired information - in seconds or less
2. Gain valuable insight into customer search and navigation behavior
3. Collect metrics that spawn navigation and content enhancements
4. Reinforce brand credibility through a seamless site experience
5. Offer a broader range of content to a larger number of audiences
To better understand exactly how these benefits are derived, this paper will cover in detail the four steps to leveraging the potential of website search technology. At the end of this paper, you'll find a checklist to help you map out and follow these steps. And while each company will have its own set of specific search requirements to address, the four primary keys to deriving measurable benefit are:
1. Outline the goals and benefits you wish to achieve via site search
2. Identify the search features that best address your goals
3. Understand the Total Cost of Ownership and ROI of your proposed search solution
4. Measure both tangible and intangible results and expand the scope of site search using lessons learned
THE 4 STEPS TO DERIVING MEASURABLE BENEFITS FROM SITE SEARCH
1. Outline the goals and benefits you wish to achieve via site search
At its most basic level, site search should enable your visitors to find relevant information fast. However, your specific goals for website search will differ depending on the nature of your business, and the way in which you wish to interact with customers. You can use the following Top 10 list as a guide for some of the key goals that can be met through the deployment of search technology.
1. Provide access via your website to a wider range of content, such as PDFs, databases, Flash and other document formats that aren't covered with standard ?find' features.
2. Reduce the time taken for your website visitors to find required content.
3. Incorporate partner websites, or websites from other divisions of the company, into your site content repository.
4. Drive website visitors towards certain types of content when they conduct a search, such as product information or customer service FAQs.
5. Improve the usability of your site search, catering to both basic and advanced users.
6. Improve the accuracy of searching to enable the pinpointing of very specific information on your website.
7. Improve the search scope so that users see similar results for words with similar meanings, or questions posed in similar ways.
8. Enable your website visitors to search within document metadata.
9. Provide automatic "searchability" of newsgroups, blogs and other user-generated content on your website.
10. Provide for fast viewing and navigation of very large files on your website, such as large PDFs.
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