E-consultancy - Site Search - News and Blog

Used car search tools... suck!

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:29:00 UT

I have been looking for a used car recently across a selection of manufacturer and third party sites, and it seems there is plenty of room for improvement in the way their search tools work.

Ideally, a search tool should be easy to use, but still allow users to choose between complex features and sort the results effectively.

So how do some of the major�car�manufacturers�perform?�

Site review: Mothercare

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:58:00 UT

Mothercare's online sales have risen dramatically over the past financial year. They reached a total of �85.5m, an increase of 78% on the previous year.

With this kind of performance, the company must be doing something right online, so we have decided to take a look at its website...

Q&A: Thomas Busch of Careerjet

Mon, 7 Jul 2008 07:30:00 UT

Careerjet is a job search engine�that�began as a bet by its�founders, Thomas Busch�and�Jean-Benoit Andrieu.

It appears they�have won -�it now�aggregates content from over 59,000 sites daily, and currently displays upwards of 21m vacancies.

We�talked to�Busch about the site's development�and the semantic technology behind its search functions.

10 things M&S can do better online

Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:00 UT

Marks & Spencer revamped its website last year, and enjoyed a successful Christmas online, increasing its web sales by 78% in the 13 weeks to the end of December.

The M&S website scored badly in a usability study last year though, so there may still be room for improvement to the user experience.

We've identified 10 areas of the site that M&S may want to take a look at...

Do you make these user experience mistakes?

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:00:00 UT

Online retailers and other website owners�still have plenty of room for improvement, as some are still guilty of some�avoidable usability problems.

Jakob Nielsen recently said that terrible websites are less common now, but an investment in improving user experience can still pay off, with average ROI around 83%.

We list ten common usability problems found on all kinds of websites...

Ten site search tips

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 12:00:00 UT

Shoppers�using an e-commerce site have two main ways of finding the exact product or service they want � the navigation bar and the search box.

While many sites have�great navigation, there are plenty whose search options return some pretty poor results.�

Site problems cause customers to flee

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:16:00 UT

More evidence of the effect poorly functioning websites can have on etailers� customer relations � this time from a poll of US consumers by Harris Interactive.

The survey found almost nine out ten respondents have experienced problems when making a transaction online, and 42% of those that have defected to a rival or abandoned the process.

Multi-channel retailers 'offer better customer service'

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:35:00 UT

Multi-channel retailers are mounting a challenge to the online dominance of their pure-play rivals despite tending to offer a lower level of site functionality, according to research.

The study, by eDigitalResearch, which uses mystery shoppers to rate UK shopping websites, found Play.com and Amazon.com continued to generate the best overall response from consumers.

However, multi-channel players like Tesco, John Lewis and M&S were�seen to have�stronger customer service.

Q&A: Jeanette Angell on Penguin's user-centred redesign

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:47:00 UT

Publishing brands�Penguin and Dorling Kindersley, both part of the Penguin Group,�recently�completed a project to relaunch their websites�and improve interaction and navigation for users.

The�revamp was pretty far reaching -�the team�took a user-centred approach, with extensive usability testing and�planning, and found new ways to�think about marketing books via the site.

The group is�also�set to�launch new sites to increase�its engagement with customers - one is a youth-oriented site called spinebreakers.co.uk, which is employing teenagers�in its development.�

Here, Penguin and DK's online development manager Jeanette Angell speaks� about the reasons behind the project and the techniques�it used.

Google to provide search for small businesses

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:08:00 UT

Google is to make its custom search engine available for�small businesses without ads.

The tool, which allows webmasters to limit queries to a certain set of documents,�on one or more websites,�will cost between $100 and $500 a year, depending on the size of the business.

Yahoo! searchers suggest fix to buggy new feature

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:00:00 UT

Yahoo! engineers had to start fixing a bug in a new live search feature, just a day after announcing the addition.

Yahoo! Search's Kevin Lee introduced the new Search Suggest function, which offers suggestions on search terms as a user types.

Six ways to improve online experience

Fri, 25 May 2007 07:12:00 UT

There has been much discussion and comment recently about the quality of online customer experiences.�Even small companies, run by specialists in their chosen field, need to provide a good online experience if they are to capture a share of the rapidly growing online spend.�

Here�s my novice's guide to improving the quality of your online experience...�

Google points to VW.com over cloaking

Tue, 8 May 2007 09:11:00 UT

Volkswagen's US marketing web team has made changes to the way its pages are constructed following an intervention from Google.

VW.com had been featured by Google's Enterprise blog last week for making search front and centre of a new design.

Yahoo! intros content separation tag

Thu, 3 May 2007 10:49:00 UT

Yahoo! has introduced a new tag that lets site owners make their core content more visible in search results.

The robots-nocontent tag allows webmasters to define areas of a page that are merely navigational elements or other secondary constructs that should be ignored by search spiders.

Yell.com redesigns homepage

Tue, 1 May 2007 15:01:00 UT

Yell.com has today unveiled a new look for its homepage, and has opted for a cleaner, more streamlined�version.

This is how it looks:

�

Google inks partnership for better govt. info access

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:10:00 UT

Google is working with US state governments to make online information more easily accessible to citizens.

The search site partnered with Arizona, Utah, California and Virginia so that "information that previously did not appear in a casual Google search will now appear when searching for results on relevant topics ranging from education to health to property records or regulations", Reuters reported and Google announced.

On-site Search � is it only about search?

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:20:00 UT

Your on-site�search�tool should�act like a human, not like an advanced search engine, writes Tal Rubenczyk.

Feature filtering - what is it and why do you need it?

Thu, 5 Apr 2007 12:48:00 UT

Providing effective feature filtering - allowing users to narrow search results and / or navigate through a website by selecting multiple product features - can make a big difference to customer experience.

Many people will only use the search option on an e-commerce site as a last resort, and�most prefer to navigate through a site using links, because this requires less mental effort.

Ask.com admits to secret anti-Google campaign

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:28:00 UT

Ask.com has launched a guerrilla-style marketing campaign designed to encourage British internet users to broaden their choice of search engine.

In the last couple of weeks, posters featuring a megaphone, a link to information-revolution.org and the slogan "stop the information monopoly" began appearing on tube trains, lamp posts and elsewhere. They warn libertarians about Google's 75% UK market share, although the name of the organisation behind the campaign was not disclosed.

Microsoft attacks Google's 'cavalier' ad billions

Tue, 6 Mar 2007 11:00:00 UT

Microsoft�is expected to publicly criticise rival Google's "cavalier" approach to copyright in a speech to the publishing industry today.

According to an advance copy of an address due to be delivered by associate general counsel Thomas Rubin to the American Association of Publishers, and obtained by the Financial Times, Rubin will say: "Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs.