10 best practices for onsite search

1. 10 S EARCH B EST P RACTICES
PETER CURRAN, PRESIDENT, CIRRUS10

2. 1) Honor the basics

3. Lowe’s
Misspellings corrected.
Facets galore yet no
refinement selection
yields zero results.

4. 2) Map ambiguous
searches to landing
pages

5. The Home Depot
Two paths to the same
result.
Browsing to a department
using navigation yields the
same result as searching
for the department name

6. 3) Account for
offline channels in
onsite search

7. Lands’ End
Physical catalog aligned
with online catalog
product and non-product
content

8. 4) Never show no
results

9. Eddie Bauer
Searching for a no results
term still yields results
that are subcategory
aware.

10. 5) Don’t let non-
product content
become a
distraction

11. Williams-Sonoma
Non-product hits without
sacrificing conversion
opportunities.

12. 6) Avoid over-
merchandizing

13. Nike Gear Up
So you’re a linebacker who
plays in cold weather and
prefers compression base
layer in black?
Cool. We have 5 products
for you.

14. 7) Write user stories

15. Sally wants a cat
User stories yield useful pages. Sites built based on lists of
functionality are often overly complicated and take longer to build.

16. 8) Keep a roadmap

17. Moosejaw
Reviews view, colors
search

18. 9) Measure Search
Separately
- Conversion after search
- No search results
- Bounce after search
- Exit after search
- Top 200 terms
- # Results per term

19. 10) Curate

20. Affymetrix
Disciplined review of
analytics and curated user
experience for buyers and
researchers alike.

21. In a nutshell ….
Think about
relevance & intent
NOT accuracy

22. BASICS EXPERIENCE
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why9@cirrus10.com (866) 996-9985

23. Peter Curran
President, Cirrus10
peter@cirrus10.com
www.cirrus10.com
206-445-7459
Cirrus10 LLC
318 1st Avenue South
Suite #315
Seattle, WA 98104
why9@cirrus10.com
866-996-9985