Probably a lot of people have ever wondered how to place a search bar right on a website or online store?
Of course, for large sites with a lot of content, search is just an unreplaceable thing. It could be even an integrated Google search engine, but it must be. In most cases, the user, visiting your site for the first time in search of something important, will not understand the navigation bars, drop-down menus, and other elements of navigation, and in a hurry will try to find something similar to the search bar. And if such a thing on the site will not appear, or the visitor can not cope with the search query, most definitely the user will leave your store.
In this article, we will tell you how to improve the quality of search in your projects.
The Importance of Searching Form
The main task of search is to help the user find the right products, so the implementation of functionality greatly affects conversion. During Baymard Institute research, 60% of users started their interaction with the site with search.
According to Shopify, users who have performed a search are 1.8 times more likely to make a purchase. And if the search didn’t yield relevant results, 80% of visitors leave the site.
Proper implementation of a search for the online store provides:
- Simplicity and speed of finding a product by the customer;
- Reduction of the user’s path through the sales funnel;
- Provide comfort in buying, and thus loyalty to the online store.
This allows effective work with the most valuable traffic – users who are looking for a specific product.
Let’s take a look at a well-designed search form: the website that offers to rent Lamborghini in Dubai provides a user an opportunity to classify the search by brand, type of car, model, price, and availability by order dates.
As we can see on the site improved and multifunctional internal search, which automatically loads a list of popular brands and models and sorts items in the drop-down menu by popularity based on the number of orders;
Based on this website we can formulate how a good searching bar must look like.
How the search form should be like
The search form must be on display
Don’t hide the search form behind an icon or images. It’s optimal to place it in the header of the site, next to the menu – where users expect to see the search bar or display the search form on every page of the site separately.
Display search suggestions
From a usability point of view, it is important that the search box would display search suggestions that would help users to find what they are looking for.
While entering a query, the functionality should offer possible product variants in a dropdown box to speed up the search and reduce typing errors.
Recognizing errors, misspellings, and wrong brand names
According to a Baymard Institute study, searches on 27% of sites fail if there is even one character mistake. Mistakes can be made not only due to user illiteracy or inattention while typing, but also due to copying content from different sites or messages in social networks. The possibility of an error or typo must be built into the search to ensure the right result.
Smart search recognizes mistakes and typos, recommending the right queries – instead of a blank output, the user sees what they’re looking for.
The search should recognize the wrong layout and show the right results. You can use search engines like Sphinx or Elastic that provide this type of correction.
Summary
The quality of the implementation of the search for the site significantly affects the conversion, so the functionality is worth special attention. As you can see, there are a lot of nuances to consider and implement. On the other hand – you have many opportunities to make it better. You can start with our advice article.
