 |
Search functionality is one of the most critical aspects of your website; it is extremely important to the user experience, to the users’ ability to retrieve content, and to your ability to keep visitors on the site, to meet their needs, and to keep them coming back.
SlipStream utilizes category, faceted, and text searching. You can use all three simultaneously during a search and can use retained filters for even more control. How powerful is this? Why is it so important?
A category search only works if your user knows how your material is organized and knows the type of content he wishes. If he knows he’s looking for a talk from a conference, or he knows he’s looking for a blog post, or an article, he can use a category search. But what if the user doesn’t know precisely what he is looking for and how you organized the material? Then he needs to do a word search. But what words does he use? Again, he might not know. And that’s were a faceted search comes into play. If your material is tagged, the user can see the tags – suggesting to him descriptive criteria he can use to do the search – and he can filter down the search results. Combine these tools together and you’ll have a powerful search tool…almost. Your search engine must also:
• Be smart enough to search for word variations
• Make it easy to add tag information
• Search all record fields and prioritize results based on which fields, and how many fields, match the search criteria
• Sort results by relevance and then allow the user to sort them by other criteria
• Search across the entire site
• Provide a retained filter option
SlipStream does all this for you… and for your customers.
World-class search capabilities are not achieved as an after thought: they are only accomplished by careful planning from the very beginning of the system design, and the system design is something done well before your site requirements ever reach your site developer. Don’t make search an afterthought!
Category browsing
A cateogry search lets you search through material that has been organized in a set of hierarchical categories. It's great for searching within a store, provided the organizational structure is clear. That will not be the case when dealing with most the other material on a website. |
Text Search
A text search involves entering a word or series of words in the text search box. The system will search all content on the site, and all the fields in that content, for those words and variations of those words (known as word inflection) prioritizing results based on relevance (e.g. if you enter a what appears to be a person's name, the site will return the person's biography at the top of the list). |
Faceted browsing
|
A faceted search invovles selecting descriptive tags to filter a list of search results. The tags are not mutually exclusive so there is greater flexibility over a category search. By letting the user see all the tags and the number of search results that would be returned if the tag is selected, the user can make smarter decisions in narrowing the search.
Retained Filter Search
|
The importance of site-wide, comprehensive searchesThis following scenario might not be applicable to your organization or your website's mission, but it demonstraates the importance of effective site-wide searching. No doubt, you will be able to imagine a similar scenario that is applicable. Imagine a mother with a disabled child comes to your site looking for information. She's reading an article in your resource library and decides she wants to see if there are any other articles of interest. By allowing a site wide search, she could find there aren't just additional articles in your library but there are recordings, there are blog posts on the subject, there are speakers that specialize on her child's partiicular disablity, and that you have an upcoming event where there will be a workshop on the subject... and that she can still register for the event. With SlipStream's comprehensive search capabilites you have brought all your resources to bear for helping this mother. Without the tools, she might just find some other articles. |
When conducting a search involved category and faceted browsing, and possibly also a text search, the user might want to start, or change their word search based on the current search results. By selecting "Retain filters", the user can keep the current category and tag filters in place. So, for example, the user could do a search regarding a particular subject matter and, after looking at the results deside to see if a particular speaker is included in the results list. All he needs to do is retain the filters and enter the speaker name in the text search box (or add it if there are words already there).
Follow us on