Easy website navigation is one of the key factors to keeping visitors interested in your site and which hopefully converts them into paying customers.
However, there comes a point when in the case of larger websites they need that little bit of extra help to go directly to what they’re looking for without having to transit two or three pages to get there.
Adding a search facility to your website will help them to do just that, especially if it is database-driven and contains a high number of products and categories.
Take Ebay for example; they don’t come much bigger or product-filled, and although navigation is generally straightforward, their search facility does save visitors an awful lot of time and effort.
It’s likely that without this search facility Ebay wouldn’t be as popular as it is because despite the instantly recognisable brand, what they offer and the bargains to be had, visitors would still shy away if they were forced to take the time to hunt down particular items.
Large information or product-filled websites would benefit enormously from a search facility not only to aid visitors but to reduce the number of abandoned visits that must surely occur when potential customers can’t find what they want quickly and easily.
Visitors need to be hooked before they lose interest or patience, so the faster you can get them to the product they want, the more likely they are to continue to the checkout and make a purchase. Making them work hard to get there will only serve to send them off to a competitor’s site in pretty quick time.
Until next time.
