Written by james | 28 January 2010
Posted in Web Design

Have you ever thought about including an internal search on your site? If not, then why not? It brings in more business, and much more hits on your site, and it greatly improves the stickiness of your site. Just one of the few basics of good quality site building.

Like on our site, you too need an internal search, as websites today need many pages and lots of information so people can gather the answers they need and round up sufficient information before contacting your company. Sometimes browsing through everything manually can be a chore and most people can not be bothered, they want to see what they want to, fast and with little effort. If there is an internal search on your site then the people get exactly what they want to know with utmost ease, which means more people will feel confident about doing business with your company

Rather that just looking like site that says, “You’re just another customer. Big deal”. You want to have a site that looks more customer orientated, looks like you care about the customers wants, needs and feelings. If you are adding new content consistently, then a search bar is a must have, otherwise your site will become tedious and confusing, this will make your volume of visitors and your stickiness plummet like a brick thrown from the top of Big Ben. Plus a search bar is an invaluable tool in helping customers (both current and potential) find what they want.

Many people can be described as being ‘searchers’ when defining their online behaviour, and adding an internal search also appeals to those customers. If someone uses Google to get to your site, then chances are they want to search on your site too, and if that is not available to them then they may just go back to Google and look for another. Keep in mind it is very common for people to go straight to the search bar when they go to a site, another reason to have one.

For every marketer, an internal site search can provide you with so much information if you have a good analytic tool. It can tell you about what sort of customers are visiting your site and how they are navigating around it. Also, it can give you an invaluable view of what your visitor’s intent, desires and behaviour. It can tell you exactly what they have searched for, what they have found, what searches made them stay, and what searches made them look elsewhere.

Also, it can help you tweak your site so more people come to you, finding what they want, and to get services or products they want. For example, it can tell you what people are searching for that you don’t have, and if there is a very popular search on a product/service you do not yet provide, you can work on creating that product/service. It can also help you figure out new keywords for your target market, so that you can appeal more to your target audience by putting in more of these keywords in places on your site. This can be great for attracting more people through search engines and SEO (search engine optimization).

Internal search bars on your site can be one of the best tools against your competitors, as it helps you to be more open to the new ways that people are finding and spreading information on the web, and it can be an exciting tool for those wishing to continue the evolution of their site.