Webmaster: Do you need search function on your website?

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The website should let people find the information, so many people like to use the search system. In fact, there are many other ways to meet the needs of information. Also, be careful not to think (many people will think) that a search engine can meet the information needs of all users. Although a lot of users want to search a site, but some people just want to browse, do not want to search the bar to fill in the contents and click the Search button. So before you build a system for your Web site, think about the following questions.

1, the website has enough content?

How much content is worth to search engine? It may be 5 pages, 50 pages, or 500 pages, and no number can be considered a standard. What is more important is the type of information requirements common to website users. When a user comes to a technical support website, there is usually a specific kind of information requirement in mind that is more likely to be a search function than a user on an online banking site. If your site is more like a library than a software program, searching may make sense. If so, consider the amount of content, and then balance the time it takes to build and maintain a search engine, and the benefits that search engines can bring to users.

2, the investment search system will not transfer more useful navigation system resources?

Because many website developers, the search engine as a user on their site to find information on the solution, so the search engine becomes the site's signature tool, the results of the navigation system is bad, the other architecture is also very weak. If you find yourself falling into this trap, you may want to suspend the search system until the navigation system is repaired. You will find that the search system works better if the search system can take advantage of all aspects of the well-designed navigation system, such as using tags (tag) to design content with controlled vocabulary. In addition, if your site navigation may be a mess for political reasons, such as the agency's decision makers cannot agree with the full station navigation system. In this sense, reality trumps everything, and search may indeed be your best alternative.

3. Do you have the time and technology to do optimization work for website search engine?

Search engines are good, but, like so many things on the web, it's hard to do well. As one of the site's users, you've obviously seen a lot of incomprehensible search interfaces, and we're sure your query string will find a lot of strange results. This is usually because site developers do not plan ahead, they may be the default to install the search engine, put it on the site, and then forget it. If you're not going to take the time to make the search engine big and best, reconsider whether you're really going to use a search engine.

4. Is there a better alternative?

Searching may be a good way to serve users, but other ways might be better. For example, if you don't have a technical expert, or you don't have information to configure a search engine, or if you don't have the money to buy it, consider using a site index instead. Site indexes and search engines can help users who already know what to look for. Although site indexing takes a lot of effort and is usually built and maintained by hand, anyone who knows HTML can maintain it.

5, website users hate search?

Your users may prefer to browse the page without searching. For example, a user to a website that sells greeting cards may want to browse all kinds of cards instead of searching. Or maybe the user does want to search, but the search has a lower priority. Therefore, you should consider how the information architecture development budget will cost you.

As we know, most websites do not make detailed plans before building a search engine. For small web sites, the expansion is not much, but, for those popular sites, there will be more and more content and function randomly piled in, the result will become a navigation nightmare. The next issue is to help you make decisions about when the site will reach the point where you need to search the system.

1, there is too much information to browse and search will help

The physical architecture has a good analogy. Powell Bookstore (http://www.powells.com) claims to be the world's largest bookstore, with 68000 square feet of Portland in Oregon State, USA. We guessed that the shop was a small shop in the first place, but when the business grew, the store knocked a door on the wall, turned into the next storefront, and finally knew the size of the store. The result is a patchwork of spaces, winding corridors and unexpected staircases. This maze of confusion is a good place to hang out and browse, but if you want to search for a particular book, you can only ask God to bless you. It is difficult to find the book you are looking for. Even if you're lucky, it's a better book to happen to meet.

Yahoo! was once a network of Powell bookstores. At first, everything was there and it was easy to find. Why? Because Yahoo and the web, the size of the very small. At the beginning, Yahoo! had only hundreds of resources, and it was easy to find information using a browsable subject registration system. Every search option is available, which is unimaginable to today's Yahoo! users. But things are changing very quickly. It has an excellent technical framework that allows site owners to easily register their websites, but the subject registration system becomes unwieldy and difficult to navigate. As a result, Yahoo has installed a search system as an alternative to finding information on the site. Today, most people use the Yahoo search system instead of browsing the catalog.

Your site may not be as big as Yahoo, but you may still experience similar fireworks. Is your content out of the browsing system? Your website users, trying to find the link on the long queues of directories on the site, are you going crazy? That's when the search engine should show up.

2, search can assist into fragments of the site

The adjacent phenomenon of Powell housing estates can be likened to a pair of content, but also like many corporate networks and large public networks. Each business unit is usually free to develop content with minimal standards, and there may be no metadata to support any reasonable browsing mechanism.

If this is your situation, you may still have a long way to go, and search does not solve all the problems, let alone solve the user's problem. The first thing to do, however, is to create a search system that covers across departments as much as possible to perform full-text indexing. Even if it is only a stopgap measure, such searches can also address the urgent need for users to find information, regardless of which business unit the information belongs to. As an information architect, search also lets you know what's on your site.

3. Search is learning tool

By searching the log analysis, you can collect useful data about what users actually want from your site and how they express their needs (in the form of search queries). Over time, you can diagnose and adjust your site's search system, other aspects of the information architecture, the effects of content, and many other areas by analyzing these precious materials.

4, search should be there, because users want to be there

Your site may not be as much content as Yahoo, but if the site is a practical site, it might be worth using a search engine. The reasons are as follows: Users do not necessarily want to browse the structure of the site, their time is limited, and cognitive capacity threshold is far below your imagination. Interestingly, sometimes users do not want to browse because of the wrong reason, that is, they are searching, but they do not need to know what to search for, and the services they browse may get better results. But, perhaps most importantly, where the user goes, they assume that the little search box should be there. It is customary to resist this wave.

5, search can be tamed dynamic

If the site has highly dynamic content, you should also consider establishing a search system. For example, if your site is a news site, you may be adding a lot of news documents to your business news channel every day, or something related to some business. In view of this, you may not have the time to manually categorize content on a daily basis or to maintain accurate directory and site indexing. Search engines can help you make a daily primer on the content of your site. By automating this process, you can ensure that users get high quality content, and you can take the time to do something else instead of manually assigning indexes and linked documents. (Text/Yong Jin)