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User Experience of Search-Bar
It all started with a search bar. The whole internet works on a search bar. But Search bar is also crucial for functioning and usability within the system. You will find almost every website, software uses search bar to some extent.
They define the secondary flow(sometimes it can be primary too) of user-experience for that system.
Search bar can be structured with three elements — Query, Suggestions and Result
Query
Queries are of two types — Keyword and Sentence. In websites and within the system, search queries are most likely to be keywords.
It is important to know what kind of queries users will be asking because search algorithms differ in their approach based on the use case. Some may try to match initial characters or words. Others may try to search for keywords.
Suggestions
Have you noticed how you behave when you try to search? Well, there can be two possibilities.
- Typing query thoughtfully and continuously looking at suggestions.
- Just type the query and press enter without looking at suggestions.
Users behave like stubborn, bullheaded teenagers when it comes to searching for information or products online.
And there, suggestion comes into the picture.
Typical users are very poor at query reformulation: If they don’t get good results on the first try, later search attempts rarely succeed. In fact, they often give up. This NN groups’ report shows how users work with queries as they shopped on various eCommerce sites. Their search success rate was:
Global Search and Scoped Search
Functioning of a search bar can be classified into two types — Global and Scoped.
Global search works the same Google works on the internet — Searching over the entire content.
Scoped search performs search operation only on a small segment of the entire content. But how does it chooses which small segment for a…
