Optimising A Site Search During Web Development

Request A Free Website Analysis

March 19th, 2010 by James

While a search utility is extremely important and typically receives a lot of visitor traffic it can be difficult to evaluate and improve. The search terms used by visitors are readily available but their analysis is more tricky. Yet it is worth persevering because an efficient search will make the most of a web design.

Relevancy testing involves determining whether a site search delivers the most appropriate result when given a simple popular query. Each query is fed in and the position in the results of the best answer is recorded. Ideally, it should be at the head of the list every time. Statistics can measure how far from the top spot the best results tend to fall, which helps to reveal any shortcomings of the search facility. Another method, known as precision testing examines the first few results returned for popular queries and rates how sensible they appear based on the original search terms.

Using the above tools to measure the effectiveness of a search utility, it is only possible to know what is occurring as opposed to why. In the end, only the visitors themselves can explain their search behaviour and this is why usability tests are sometimes carried out. Search terms that produce no results at all are important as they can reveal what is missing from a site, leading to important information being added which was originally overlooked. If your website requires a search facility, at Click Consult we have the web development skills to make it work effectively together with web design for your search marketing campaign.

Web Design And Usability Testing
Carrying out usability testing as part of the web marketing… and development process is potentially beneficial, but there are a number of pitfalls to avoid. Tests can be unreliable if they are not carefully planned and results can be useless...
Top 5 Tips for using A/B Testing to Optimise your Conversion Rates
In the previous blog that corresponds with this, I wrote about the basics of A/B Testing, and in essence how it can be used as a form of conversion rate optimisation…. So, here are five dedicated tips to help...
Maintaining PPC Test Validity
Testing PPC ads is a significant part of pay per click management and yet it can be a little confusing at times. What should you be testing and what actually determines a valid test? Are there factors that cannot be…...
Why Multivariate testing is not content cloaking
In a recent blog I published a list of some of the positive influence that conducting A/B testing can have on success of an internet marketing campaign…. However, despite the reasons why testing should be conducted, there does seem to...
Sometimes A New Web Design Is The Answer
For some websites, the original web design may have been considered long ago, and the needs of the company and its customers have long since changed. In other cases, the initial web development… was poorly thought out and was not...