On-site product search, explained without the jargon

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Here is on-site product search without the vocabulary that usually surrounds it.

Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

The short version

People who use search convert at a much higher rate. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Why people complicate it

Most of the confusion comes from tooling rather than from the idea itself. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

Handle typos and synonyms or they leave empty-handed. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Where to go from here

Log zero-result searches, they are a product roadmap. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

What this looks like day to day

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Three things worth confirming about on-site product search before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Log zero-result searches, they are a product roadmap — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.