January 19th 2008 Posted to
internet, mobile
Free Advice #1 Avoid Stupid Search Results
I am not sure if the usability gurus will agree with me or give this advice 3 skulls on their next bestseller book. The problem is that stupid search
Poor results are a waste of time for your users. It is obvious that if someone searches for “dogs” and your site presents results related to “cats” is completely useless for your visitors and make things really difficult to pic a second parameter to narrow your query.
Inaccurate search results is a very know topic and have been extensively discussed in the past. This advice focus on search result interpretation, or how you site´s internal search engine will deal with the content that should be presented to your visitor.
The mistake that will be illustrated in this advice that I consider the most boring one and represents a waste of time is the “1 result found page”. The Weather Channels demonstrates this problem very well on their website. Every time that I want to view the weather forecast for Curitiba, the city where I live, they came up with the 1 result found page. So, if I used a very accurate query argument that produced only one result, why they have to show that useless page? It would be much easier and time saver if they display the forecast for Curitiba instead of that.
Now, suppose you are in Brazil and using your brand new unlocked iPhone or any other mobile device connected to the Internet via EDGE or GPRS and your GSM Carrier (Claro, Oi, TIM, BrT or VIVO) is charging you for every KB transferred over the network? That useless “1 result found page” just cost you a few cents.
The curious part is that if this problem was properly handled, they could have saved some development time and avoided coding a function called “Local weather in 1-click” that is placed on a not very visible position.
