Your onsite search engine – a treasure cove
Imagine this version of eden: You have built a website. And of course you’ve done your best. But you realize you can’t know everything. The website goes live. And instead of just keeping your fingers crossed and hoping your website will be effective, you actually get a chance to sit down next to your visitors and see what it is they need. You see what information they are missing when surfing your site and you are able to optimise your website based on your observations. Wow, that would be great wouldn’t it?
Surprise
Well, do I have a surprise for you. This is not just a great tale, it’s what you have access to when you take your onsite search engine seriously. Each time a visitor uses your onsite search engine he is in fact telling you what he needs. He’s helping you understand what content you are missing and what content you have hidden to deep down for him to find. Take heed of what he’s trying to tell you and your site will be better for it.
Missing
This one is obvious. When your visitors can’t find what they want through regular navigation they will try searching for it. Use their keywords to find the content you need to offer them. When writing for a website, you try to write from the visitor’s perspective. But -not being a client yourself – you are limited. By using the statistics from your onsite search engine you find out the keywords related to the content they need. Use these to create new content. Some of it may be questions to which you found the answer obvious: your visitors didn’t. Or information you found useless: your visitors didn’t.
Hidden
All the interaction designers in all the world couldn’t make a website that everyone understands. Humans are the same in many ways, but also as unique as the evolutionary coincidence that has enabled us to thrive as a race. Your navigation won´t hit home for everyone. Your onsite search engine will help you figure out what content you have hidden too well for visitors to find. Based on the statistics you can either change your navigation or find new ways of disclosing content like for instance related articles or access to frequently asked questions (faqs) on each page.
Do you use your onsite search engine’s statistics to improve your website?
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