Tips to Make Your Hosted Search Tool More Usable

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Hosted search engines allow you to easily incorporate a search function onto your website. Almost all of them give you some form code to put on your website, but you don’t have to use that code as they give it to you – you can customize it in order to improve its usability.

There are a variety of popular hosted search services available, such as Google’s Custom Search Engine, but the thing to keep in mind is this: no matter which one you choose, if your visitors can’t find the search field or it’s not very usable, it won’t do them, or you, much good.

So here are some tips for how to make your hosted search tool as usable as possible once you incorporate it onto your website – both for the search field itself and on the results page.

For the search field

• Use a search box with a type-in field – Let your visitors type in their search term right from the page that they’re on, rather than having them go to a specific search page to do it. Doing so makes the search more accessible and cuts out an unnecessary step from the search process.
• Style your search field appropriately – If the search field is too short, your visitors won’t be able to see the full search term they’re typing in. This is a problem particularly if they need to revise their term before searching. Avoid this problem and make the search field wide enough to contain multiple terms.
• Keep it in a consistent location – Your search function should be in as prominent and consistent a location as your website’s logo. I prefer either the right side of the header or in the main navigation area. The point is, visitors expect it near the top of the page, so make sure to put it there.
• Use an icon to emphasize its nature – Improve your website’s usability and make your search field more obvious by using an icon within your input field. A magnifying glass is the universal symbol for search, so use that to call attention to, and visually communicate the nature of, your search field.

For the search results page

• Limit the number of search results per page – If you have a lot of content being indexed, a large number of results might show up for certain search terms. Break the search results up into manageable chunks will help your visitors browse through them easier.
• Put a search box at the top of the search results page – This will make it easier for people to do another search should the results of the first one not be what they were looking for. You should customize the code a bit to make it look a bit larger than your regular search field.
• Have the term they searched for display in that search box - Having the searched-for term appear within the box on the results page when the results appear will further reinforce what they had typed in, and if they mistyped something and got wrong results, they’ll see what the mistake was.

Thoughts?

Do you use a popular hosted search tool on your website? If so, have you customized it to make it more usable for your visitors? If not, which of the tips mentioned above would you incorporate? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

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