11 Things I Hate About Web Site Search Functions ![[Registration never required for free content]](/images/free.gif)
By: Steven Seiller on Monday, May 12, 2008
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My wife is an Internet shopping fiend! And because she tells me everything that annoys her, she told about this web site on which she was searching for a product. The product she was looking for was found in twenty different styles each of which found in six different categories. The results of these twenty products ballooned to a result of 120 which was overly repetitious.
Her rant got me to thinking about my own frustrations with web site search functions. Search is currently the dominant computing paradigm. As evidence of this, you merely need to look at how recent versions of operating systems and web browsers have placed search functions in prominent positions on your screen. Look at the latest versions of Mac OS or Windows and you will see that search functions have made their way to the top tier of marketed features. Together with the popularity of search engines, users are indoctrinated into the process of searching instead of looking. The premise of Gmail is that your don't need to file your messages because you can just search for them.
Since more and more web site visitors are expecting to find what they want by searching, you should ensure you provide this feature for them so they don't leave your site and find another which does have a prominent search box.
This article contains a list of my common observations of obstacles to successfully enabling search on your web site.
