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Website search hurts my feelings

openmymind.net

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Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#151

Post by jrm4 »

jwr wrote: post #149

I can explain this. About 15 years ago or so, together with a friend, we started a company whose goal was to offer a working product search for E-commerce. Faceting was just one aspect of the problem, a much more pressing issue for non-English speaking countries is that you need a way to deal with declension and various misspellings (especially from people that do not enter accented characters). So we did. Solve the…

Perfect.

While I've never been as deep in the details, my perpetual answer here is:

"You're so vain, I bet you think this search is about you?"

I understand it because people are human, but I can't help but feel annoyance when people are like "the search engine isn't doing what I want!"

It's not designed to DO THAT, it's designed to maximize it's own sales and we're pretty much at the point where we should try to stop pretending otherwise.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#152

Post by AmazingTurtle »

To be fair, he searched for "laundry detergent" and sorted Name A-Z and was wondering why only 3M stuff appeared. Also I failed to comprehend this one

> Of course the list of switch games isn't under Games > Nintendo Switch Games that would be silly.

Well.. There is a list of games when you open Games > Nintento Switch Games. What is he complaining about?

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#153

Post by xigoi »

AmazingTurtle wrote: post #152

To be fair, he searched for "laundry detergent" and sorted Name A-Z and was wondering why only 3M stuff appeared. Also I failed to comprehend this one > Of course the list of switch games isn't under Games > Nintendo Switch Games that would be silly. Well.. There is a list of games when you open Games > Nintento Switch Games. What is he complaining about?

> There is a list of games when you open Games > Nintento Switch Games. What is he complaining about?

That the list doesn’t contain all Nintendo Switch games that the site offers and there doesn’t seem to be any clear reason why those particular 120 games were chosen.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#154

Post by Analemma_ »

ruined wrote: post #106
plz-remove-card wrote: post #93

On officedepot.com when searching for a produect I have found no way to filter by "in stock at my chosen store" you have to search, then click through each individual item. The one and only reason I am considering office depot as a place to spend my money is because they're local and I can go get whatever cable or thing I need, right now.

analytics have confirmed that surfacing inventory status is bad for the customer because it reduces conversion

Is it good for conversion when I give up out of frustration at your broken store and decide to just get the thing on Amazon instead?

This isn't just hypothetical: for a while I was using QFC (Kroger) for grocery pickup, but after one too many instances of adding an item to my cart and then only finding out at checkout that a third of my items weren't actually available, I said to hell with it and switched to doing all that at Whole Foods instead, since their inventory counts are actually correct.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#155

Post by scotty79 »

I would really love if there was some browser built-in skinnable system for lists that lets the user control ordering of the list and information visibility on the list, also filtering and grouping.

There should be a movement for solutions that put power in the hands of the user.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#156

Post by scotty79 »

jwr wrote: post #149

I can explain this. About 15 years ago or so, together with a friend, we started a company whose goal was to offer a working product search for E-commerce. Faceting was just one aspect of the problem, a much more pressing issue for non-English speaking countries is that you need a way to deal with declension and various misspellings (especially from people that do not enter accented characters). So we did. Solve the…

You should have pivoted and become price comparison site with good product search.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#157

Post by binarymax »

Solvency wrote: post #141
binarymax wrote: post #112

Love this article. Worked as a search relevance consultant for years and these are exactly the problems we work on. Most of the time fixing search is a thankless job. People expect it to work and when it does they take it for granted, but when it doesn’t it damages your reputation and brand. If you want to get started fixing website search relevance I recommend the books “Relevant Search” by Turnbull and Berryman, an…

I'm not trying to fix search so what's the tldr on why it's so hard to do with such constrained databases? The Nintendo one seems insanely egregious. Is this not just a symptom of corporate laziness rather than search problem complexity?

The searchable content may be constrained, but the queries aren’t ;)

Search is hard because you need to anticipate and model the language of all potential searchers and the content.

There’s also lots of ambiguity because you’ll only get one or two keywords from the searcher without any other context, and you need to take into account trends and content quality and metadata.

Also, in lots of cases search is bad because the product team either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#158

Post by mvdtnz »

jrm4 wrote: post #151
jwr wrote: post #149

I can explain this. About 15 years ago or so, together with a friend, we started a company whose goal was to offer a working product search for E-commerce. Faceting was just one aspect of the problem, a much more pressing issue for non-English speaking countries is that you need a way to deal with declension and various misspellings (especially from people that do not enter accented characters). So we did. Solve the…

Perfect. While I've never been as deep in the details, my perpetual answer here is: "You're so vain, I bet you think this search is about you?" I understand it because people are human, but I can't help but feel annoyance when people are like "the search engine isn't doing what I want!" It's not designed to DO THAT, it's designed to maximize it's own sales and we're pretty much at the point where we should try to sto…

It's not vanity to complain that a faceted search tool is surfacing completely useless facets populated by obviously-wrong data and actively lying to the user about the number of results in each facet. Or returning completely unrelated products like an umbrella in a search for laundry detergent in the top 3 results.

Users should expect better. People with your attitude are not helping.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#159

Post by tempestn »

scotty79 wrote: post #156
jwr wrote: post #149

I can explain this. About 15 years ago or so, together with a friend, we started a company whose goal was to offer a working product search for E-commerce. Faceting was just one aspect of the problem, a much more pressing issue for non-English speaking countries is that you need a way to deal with declension and various misspellings (especially from people that do not enter accented characters). So we did. Solve the…

You should have pivoted and become price comparison site with good product search.

Comparison sites are predominantly not about good search either, but rather affiliate relationships.

Re: Website search hurts my feelings

#160

Post by esafak »

jwr wrote: post #149

I can explain this. About 15 years ago or so, together with a friend, we started a company whose goal was to offer a working product search for E-commerce. Faceting was just one aspect of the problem, a much more pressing issue for non-English speaking countries is that you need a way to deal with declension and various misspellings (especially from people that do not enter accented characters). So we did. Solve the…

I think whether or not it matters is contextual. If I am trying to get work done, or trying to buy something on your site I very much care if search works. UX is a feature.

You can acquire customers with lower prices, but can you keep them with a bad UX?

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