Design vs Art Blog

Searching for products in your website, users could make many mistakes. Your website search engine should not only accept exact matches but also misspelled words.

Petsmart.com, the online pet shop, propose other search terms when the one entered by the user does not match any on the database. Searching for “dogga” will propose the search term “doggy”.

Improving usability and sales, Amazon.com has a much better design of its search result page. At Amazon, searching for “shinning” will not only propose the exact term “shining” but it will also show related products.

This approach makes users’ life easier and could bring the products you want to sell closer to your clients.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Being consistent with the search box position is going to help your users when looking for the products you sell online. Many could say that the right position for the search box is the upper right corner. Maybe Yes.

But setting your own search box position is a practical web design option. Keep in mind that you should place the search box in the same place across your whole website.

Check, for example, Foodnetwork.com, a website about cooking. It doesn’t matter where your are, there is only one search box, always in the same place.

On the other side, an example of poor usability, could be found at Colorware.com. At the beginning the search box is in the right position, after the user makes a search another search box appears in the middle of the screen. This is confusing for some users, many click once again the search button but this time in the new search box.

Popularity: 10% [?]