j3

Organized search results at a glance

Site Genre: Pattern Group j

magnify imageFigure J3.1 In its extensive online restaurant guide, Zagat lets its customers sort by name, cuisine, area, food (F), d‘cor (D), service (S), and cost (C). It also shows a restaurant’s address and phone number, as well as a short excerpt from the review.

Background

A visible SEARCH ACTION MODULE (J1), a STRAIGHTFORWARD SEARCH FORM (J2), and CLEAR FORMS (H10) address some of the common problems that site visitors have using search engines. However, it might still be difficult for your customers to comprehend search results, especially when there are a large number of them. Structuring and organizing search results can make them much easier to understand. This pattern covers ways of arranging and categorizing search results to make them more valuable to your customers. It applies to both local searches on your site and Web wide search engines.

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PROBLEM

It can be difficult for site visitors to understand search results if there are too few or too many results.

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SOLUTION

magnify image Figure J3.6 Organize search results, and continue to update the search database with common synonyms.

Provide relevant summaries in your customers‘ search results. Clearly organize the results. Provide hyperlinked titles for each hit on the search results page. Use log files to tailor the search engine for the most common search terms and to compensate for common misspellings. Support your customers’ common search tasks.

Other Patterns to Consider

You can use the card-sorting techniques described in Chapter 3 (Knowing Your Customers: Principles and Techniques) to find common search terms, but do this before launching the site and before performing a log file analysis. This strategy can help you prevent errors, instead of waiting for them to happen and then fixing the problems after the fact. Use the SITE ACCESSIBILITY (B9) pattern to ensure that the results you return can be used by all of your potential customers, including those with disabilities. When WRITING FOR SEARCH ENGINES (D6), give your Web pages DISTINCTIVE HTML TITLES (D9), and construct the pages using simple HTML that a search engine’s Web crawlers can understand. On mobile platforms, consider using LOCATION-BASED SERVICES (M3) to emphasize nearby places in the search results.

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