Does Internal Search Matter?
I heard a comment the other day that if your site is well organized and nicely designed that the internal search function doesn’t matter. Really? As you can tell, I’m skeptical.
I’ve done a lot of usability testing on some award-winning sites over the years, and I’ve seen “searchers” and “navigators.” And those searchers will often jump right to the search box without even looking at the navigation. I talked about this a while back, with the conclusion that you need to accommodate both kinds of users. Ironically, that post was in response to somebody who said ALL you need to worry about is internal site search.
That shouldn’t be surprising, as popular as search has become. We all know it’s how most people find most things on the Web, and search is way up even over just last year. By no means am I suggesting that superior design and navigation aren’t things worth striving for, it isn’t enough. Healthcare is way too complicated to allow for sites that are so simple that any audience visiting for any purpose is always going to find just what they are looking for.
What do you think? Are we wasting time focusing on internal search functionality?
We just finished up with 4 days of design/usability testing on our site. Internal search is still very popular.