Search Experience Optimisation - SIUC 2011

Search Experience Optimisation “Navigation isnt enough”Squiz Training01 Sep 2011 David Hawking

Topics1. Why should I care?2. Isnt navigation enough?3. Arent all search engines the same?4. Putting smiles on faces.

I want the cheapest quad core laptop with 4GB RAM

I need bank details for receiving an overseas payment

I need a licence for a shotgun

Is my friend still at Newcastle University?

NZ visitors visa for Indian citizen living in Australia

What have we seen?  Computer vendor ◦  Search much more effective than nav. but …  Bank ◦  Search much more effective than nav.  Police ◦  Search much more effective than nav.  University (UK) ◦  Search much more effective than nav.  Government agency (NZ) ◦  I need a licence for a shotgun :-)

Q: Why should I care about search?

  Because your site visitors do. ◦  Some visitors are search dominant ◦  Others need it to satisfy the purpose of their visit.  Because its a vital part of the web experience on your site. ◦  You mightnt notice it when you are admiring your own Squiz handiwork, but ...  Because you may lose business.  Because it may reduce enquiry-handling load.

Admittedly, this was in 2003, but ... housing loan

Wont a goodontology / taxonomy / knowledge map fix any problem?

No.  There are many ways to organise your information. ◦  A static site has to pick one. ◦  Will all your visitors understand which? ◦  Use faceted navigation?  Top level categories are often opaque ◦  People cant reliably pick whats underneath  Too many steps to the leaves.  Classification is difficult ◦  Mixed topics ◦  Disagreement ◦  Missed labels

Which of these has the books on web experiencemanagement?

Arent all search engines the same?

No.  Ranked v. unranked search results ◦  Effective ranking puts at the top the documents most likely to be useful, given the need most likely to lie behind the query  Comparing quality of rankings  Five levels of ranking sophistication ◦  Example query: Prime Minister

Level 1: Unranked  All the documents which contain prime and minister, in arbitrary order.

Level 2: Content similarity

Level 3: “Importance”  All the documents which contain prime and minister, in order of a combination of static and dynamic (query-dependent) scores. ◦  PageRank ◦  URL length/type ◦  Also, Adult content rating, spamminess, reading age, recency ...

Level 4: Adaptive, contextual   As above, but taking account of what other pages and other people say about pages to be retrieved.   Improves as people interact with it.

Level 5: Tolerant and helpful   As above, but giving people what they want even if they dont know how to ask the right question: ◦  My son needs material for a school project on the prime minister ◦  Julier Gillart ◦  pm   Query suggestion and completion   Faceting   Location-dependent search   Diversification   Profiles

Other capabilities you may need

  High quality result summaries.  Rapid search response to site changes  Workflow  Reporting and Analytics  Templating / customisation  Advertising  Integrated search across all repositories  Intelligent query completion  Tunability  Compliance auditing  Efficient enforcement of access restrictions  Scalability  ...Tomorrows session will cover many of these.

Deploying high level search

Alternatives to built-in search (sorry, I pinched this from the sales guys!) Funnelback Funnelback Funnelback Cloud Hosted EnterpriseInstant scalability and redundancy Dedicated and fully managed Self managed Complete control over the Funnelback searchA fully managed search service that’s instantly A fully managed search service hosted on software on a self-managed Windows orscalable and redundant through our dedicated hardware that’s especially Linux platform. Our search experts can helpspecialised search cloud environment. architected to meet the most challenging your organisation search across web sites,Funnelback Cloud can be deployed in days, search environments. For web sites and online intranets, database, file shares, SharePointnot months. For web sites and online catalogues, complete control over the look and sites, TRIM, staff directories and othercatalogues, complete control over the look and feel allows a seamless experience for your repositories in a single query.feel allows a seamless experience for your usersusers ABC

For optimum visitor experience ...

  Design search into your project from the start – its a key part of the overall experience.  Publish with a view to supporting effective search. ◦  See FB Content Optimiser (tomorrow) ◦  Site search, external search optimisation and accessibility are fully aligned.  Use search tools which can support the user experience … and give you control.

What do we end up with?  High quality search results  A website that does its job  A web experience that everyone enjoys  Productive staff  Happy end-users  Happy customers

Search Experience Optimisation - SIUC 2011

by Squiz on Sep 07, 2011

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