• 72% of American households play computer or video games.
• 42% of gamers are women, with women age 18 or older representing a bigger portion of the game-playing population (37%) than boys 17 or younger (13%).
• The average age of the most frequent game purchasers is 41.

Many customers may not have a history or deep relationships with gaming. These users carry expectations built from their interactions with popular websites, applications and tools. As a result, they expect online retailers and digital distribution platforms to behave similarly, according to Elastic Path’s latest research The State of PC Gaming 2011: The Shift from Packaged Goods to Digital Distribution. Download a free copy of the full report.

Hmm… I need a new game, but what?

Search and category browsing are of equal importance in game discovery. The chart below shows that one in three gamers browse by game genre (32%) or use the search box (31%) when starting the hunt for a new game.

• Affluent, more educated gamers are more likely to use recommendation engines.
• Gen Y gamers (aged 18-34) browse bestsellers, new releases, and highest rated games more often than older audiences.
• Lower income and older gamers (aged 35-54) are much more likely to browse game genres.

Searching and browsing are complicated. There is no one “perfect” design—you need to design and optimize for multiple search scenarios and types of users. Savvy retailers and distributors will expose their product catalogs in numerous ways—through personalized recommendations, an effective search function, rankings, and well-structured categorization—to meet visitor expectations and lift conversion rates. Those that can provide relevant recommendations, and social features that let gamers easily find their friends and see what they are playing, will improve retention rates.

Amazon: Offers predictive search suggestions and, if the search term is misspelled, shows “top results” for the word or phrase the visitor was likely looking for. Amazon also has more sorting, filtering and recommendation options than other game sites.

Will I like this game?

Merchandising is about understanding the kind of information that’s critical to purchasing decisions. Since many PC games require major investments of time, money and effort, game buyers are looking for no-hassle ways to truly understand and test-drive titles prior to purchase. And the greater the commitment a game demands, the better its discovery tools need to be. Free trials, streaming game demos, trailers, user-generated content (e.g., screenshots, reviews), and industry reviews can all help gamers determine in advance if a title is worthwhile. As Oliver Kaltner, GM of Microsoft Germany Consumer and Channel Group, noted at Gamescom 2011 in reference to the fragile US economy, “So far people don’t spend less, but they spend more time making the right decision before they make a purchase.”

Big Fish Games: Provides trial versions that are easy to spot and well-differentiated from full games.

Sign me up, Scotty

Developers and publishers should also make it easy for gamers to get up and running once they have decided what they want to play. Hardcore gamers may have the patience to endure 45 minutes or more to find a suitable game, sign up for an account, pay, and start to download; older or casual gamers most likely will not bother. One reason why Steam has been successful in the PC download market is that it has become akin to a “games folder”; when they want to play, gamers simply launch Steam and choose a title from their library. New entrants wanting to compete with market leaders like Steam will need to offer lightening quick installation, with the rest of the game streaming in the background once play has commenced, or cloud gaming, to find favor with consumers impatient to play.

Steam: Even Steam has its flaws. The benefits of signing up are only explained after the user has decided to sign up. Help is only offered after the user downloads and starts up a game.

Interested in more gaming content?

Download a free copy of the full research report The State of PC Gaming 2011: The Shift from Packaged Goods to Digital Distribution. Alternatively, watch our on-demand webinar, Monetizing Digital Content – the Rocky Road Ahead, where we explore consumer attitudes towards paying for online content.

One aspect of site search optimization we do well to obsess over is the ability to keep a user engaged on your site, even when a search attempt fails, for example, when zero matches are returned. This post is based on the section “No Search Results Strategy: Not a Zero-Sum Game.” Nudelman believes that “no simple set of rules exist that guarantees a successful implementation of a no search results page. However, the following four broad design principles provide a useful starting point:”

1. Don’t be afraid to say I did not understand. Clearly indicate there are no search results, so your customer can recover.

2. Focus on a providing a way out. Make sure every control on the search results page does something productive to help resolve the no search results condition.

3. Create a robust partial match strategy. Over-constraining is the most frequent mistake people make when searching ecommerce sites. Having a robust partial match strategy is critical.

4. Employ multiple content strategies. Draw from multiple sources to provide the most relevant content first to aid recovery from the no search results condition, while staying true to your customer’s original intent.

Do Not Be Afraid to Say I Did Not Understand

When there are no products that match a search query, it’s important to clearly state as such. Morningstar.com is an extreme example of what not to do:

Google’s method is better, clearly showing that an automatic substitution was made, with the option to search for the original query:

Focus on Providing a Way Out

Every search page that returns no matches should help the customer recover. Endless.com’s “Narrow By” tools are superfluous (you can’t refine zero). Nothing on this page helps the user escape other than conducting another search:

Interestingly, Endless is owned by Amazon.com, which provides a stellar way out by broadening the search term and showing clearly how the term was modified.

I’ve come across an alternate presentation. Ebay offers a list of several search refinements with the number of search results present for each option:

Create a Robust Partial Match Strategy

The figure above shows a partial match strategy in action. According to Nudelman’s user testing research and field studies, next to misspelling, overconstraining is the most common cause of no results found (people enter too many keywords). Showing relevant content that matches a part of the customer’s search term, while clearly showing which keywords were omitted from search results provides your customers with a much better chance of finding something they want, and reduces site abandonment.

“In most studies I’ve observed, even after participants have figured out which part of the query they’ve gotten wrong, not a single person has ever come back to the site that originally failed to deliver partial matches that would in some way guide them to the product they were seeking.”

Nudelman says few sites do a better job at partial match than Amazon.com. This example shows two partial match results on one page:

Another cause of overconstraint is when the customer searches within a category. Offering the option to expand their search to all categories is another partial match tactic. Ketera uses a text link (though I am concerned this call to action is not visible enough).

Nudelman notes that though this approach works, it forces the customer to take action without assurance that there are results waiting on the other side. A better way is to display any results from all categories on the search results page, with an appropriate heading like “More Like This.”

I often search eBay and constrain to Canada, as this is my first choice for speed and cost of delivery. This constraint often yields zero results. Ebay shows items from international sellers, my second choice, which is a great usability feature for me.

Employ Multiple Content Strategies

In addition to partial match, successful search result pages use several content strategies when no matches can be served. The Ketera example above not only provides one, but multiple “ways out.” There is a link to browse a relevant category or to create a public Request for Information for the search term, as well as links to featured suppliers.

Other ideas:

• Correct spelling or substitute the original keyword(s) with different ones from a controlled vocabulary
• Remove some of the original keywords, or make partial matches
• Match only categories or aspects, without the keywords
• Show top searches, featured results or most popular results
• Use autosuggestion tools
• Display 3rd party resources and ads

Be careful how you display ads…Ebay’s text ads sometimes push its alternative search links too far down the page.

How many folks will scroll below ads?

We often forget about site search abandonment with all the focus on checkout, but keeping searchers on your site should also be an optimization goal. You may not be able to implement all the above strategies overnight, or even with your current search tool. But it’s helpful to be aware of how zero results found can be remedied, to help guide your roadmap for future site improvements.

Looking for help with ecommerce? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy and conversion optimization services can improve your business results.

• Now that we’ve got search data, what are we going to do with it? 6 Tips for Site Search Reporting: Things to Look For in Site Search Data outlines how you can use your site search logs to improve your merchandising, SEO, paid search advertising and site search usability.

• Is your search tools fully-loaded with all the options? 22 Features for Site Search Nirvana lists the features and functionality that makes a Cadillac site search, from search box usability, to refinement tools, to search results presentation – with plenty of examples.

• Perhaps your tool needs an upgrade. With so many vendors out there, what’s a girl to do? 15 Things to Ask Your Site Search Vendor is a checklist that you can use to grill sales reps after you’ve narrowed down the field to a short list.

• One of the worst ways to lose sales is to have “zero results” appear for a users’ search – for a product you do carry. Often this happens because your site search thesaurus has not been optimized with the misspellings and synonyms that customers use. Of course, it’s near impossible to predict every possible misspelling and variant, so how do you efficiently find the keywords that matter most? 7 Sources for Tweaking Your Site Search Thesaurus shows you how.

• Does your site use advanced search? While most ecommerce sites should avoid advanced search in favor of good search refinement and sorting features, some sites genuinely need it. The challenge is to make advanced search usable! 11 Tips for Advanced Search Usability is an illustrated guide.

And just for fun…

Looking for help with ecommerce? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy and conversion optimization services can improve your business results.

For example, one of the top 10 best paid search terms for Walmart is “prevacid.” It’s likely a very common search term on the site as well. But if you misspell the anti-indigestion drug, you might choke on the “zero results found” message you receive:

If many people are searching for “prevasid” on the site, that could turn into a lot of lost business for Wally-mart.

Trouble is, there’s no automated way to do this – there’s no universal thesaurus that can predict all the terms you should include in your search dictionary that considers brand / product names and industry-specific terms. You must do it manually.

Naturally, the first source is your site search logs. Identify searches with “0 results found” and see what existing search terms they can map to, and adjust your search tool’s vocabulary to accommodate them.

But this only helps for searches that have already occurred. You want to also be proactive for your most important products. So, in addition to site search logs, you can use any of these 6 additional resources:

1. Keyword research tools like Google Keyword Tool, Wordstream, Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery.

2. Customer reviews (both yours and “theirs”), which helps you understand what product attributes are important to customers and may identify long-tail opportunities

3. Competitors’ descriptions and title tags – they may know something you don’t know based on their own research and data.

4. SpyFu, a paid search competitive intelligence tool shows you what your competitors are bidding on in PPC campaigns. You can take out a one day membership for just a few dollars.

5. Use the Google Analytics hack that shows you the long tail terms Google is matching your ads to. You might find some gems in your paid keyword referrals. Update: Google Adwords has changed its Analytics reporting, you no longer need this hack. Find this data with Traffic Sources>Adwords>Keywords>Matched Search Query> and refine by Match Type or Keyword.

6. Brainstorm. Sometimes you can come up with misspelling ideas that don’t show up in the above tools. Ask coworkers how they would spell certain products. Try doubling letters like “L” and “R” or singling them when they are actually doubled. Add apostrophes where there shouldn’t be, and remove them where they should. Break apart compound words like “antivirus” into “anti-virus” or “anti virus.” Meld words that should be separate like “leg warmers” to “legwarmers.” Get creative.

True, this can be a very time consuming project, but it’s worth it for certain terms. Figure out a way to prioritize which terms need optimization first, and work down from there – e.g. start with flagship products, top sellers, top seasonal products, highest margin or top misspelled terms.

We can add one more to this list. Staples.com is leveraging “how to” buying guides at the top of search results for its most popular terms, like “paper:”

This attention-grabbing tactic can help reduce bounce rates on key search pages (the percentage of visitors that abandon the page within 5-10 seconds), and help customers understand which search results to click. For example, the video explains page weight and brightness and which types of usage (e.g. double sided printing, advertising) they are appropriate for.

If you’re thinking of using this technique, consider not only the most popular search terms but also product categories that have the most variable product attributes (and thus, decision criteria) or whose product descriptions include a lot of jargon.

Here are 22 features to consider to optimize your site search tool for usability, guided selling and customer satisfaction.

Search Box

1. Placement
2. Size
3. Scope

Placement

Search boxes should be easy to spot where customers expect them (top right hand corner or top center). Avoid “Search” links in navigation menus – most will scan your page for a box. Also avoid placing email sign-up boxes where a customer expects a search box – they will use it incorrectly! If you must show search and email sign-up close together, include instructions like “enter keywords” or “enter email address.”

Size

Search boxes should be long enough to accommodate longer search terms, it’s easier on your customers when they can see the bulk of their search phrase input before hitting “Search.” 30 characters is a minimum, but you can certainly go bigger.

Scope

Scoped search allows customers to search within a particular section of your site, for example Books vs. Music vs. DVDs. Sounds helpful in theory, but not always necessary. Usability research by Jakob Nielsen from over a decade ago revealed common problems, such as users selecting the wrong category to search within, or users not realizing they are searching within a scoped section, rather then the whole site (especially when one section is selected as the default, rather than “Entire Site.”)

In my opinion, it is better to allow the user to search the entire site, then narrow results by department, as Amazon allows:

One exception – if your store is bolted on to a parent site (as is common in the software industry), it’s a good idea to offer scoped search to allow visitors to search within sections like Discussion Forums, Corporate Info, Product Info and Store.

Search Tools

4. Autosuggest
5. Autocorrect
6. DId you mean?
7. Related searches
8. Search within results
9. Sort by
10. Filtered navigation
11. Advanced search

Autosuggest

Another workaround for scoped search is autosuggest, which reduces typos and helps avoid “zero results found” as suggestions are always for products and categories you carry.

Notice how Apple.com not only scopes results by site section, it also uses “rich autocomplete” by including thumbnail images.

Autocorrect

Rather than show “0 results found,” showing something can reduce abandonment. Tweaking your tool to handle misspellings saves the visitor from entering their search again and shows the “intelligence” of your site, and may instill more confidence in your search tool.

However, autocorrect can fail – for example, “camo” and “cami” are very different but they may be typos of each other. It’s a good idea to state that you don’t have any results, with suggestions of a similar spelled term, than to let the customer think your search has made a mistake.

Did you mean?

If you have many items that are close in spelling, you might opt for “Did you mean?” rather than autocorrect.

Related searches

Like autosuggest, related searches links help searchers drill down to more specific terms than they originally typed, and may offer ideas they never thought of

Search within results

Search within results is an “okay to have” but not a must. It’s easy enough for the searcher to go back and enter the refinement into the regular search box. If you are considering building this feature, I suggest using development resources elsewhere.

Keep in mind that searchers may mistake the “search within” box for the real search box. If they enter an unrelated query, they’re likely to get zero results and may leave your site.

Sort by

I’m a huge fan of “sort by” to re-order results based on what the customer values. Some folks are interested in top sellers, some in newest arrivals, some want to see top rated items first and others are price sensitive.

Filtered navigation

I’m an even bigger fan of filtered navigation. Sometimes called “guided search,” filters allow you to guide visitors to product based on product attributes that are important to them such as color, price ranges, brand, gender, size, category/sub-category, style, % off, etc. There’s no limit to how creative you can get with filtered navigation, like “filter by problem:”

It’s a good idea to include the number of results in each sub-facet in (brackets).

My favorite implementation of filters is on ASOS.com, where you can narrow by several attributes at the same time with checkboxes. Results are updated without refresh using AJAX.

Some online shops apply filters to categories but not to search results – don’t be one of them!

Advanced search

Most sites don’t need advanced search if they’ve got good filtered navigation. If your site truly needs advanced search, here are 11 tips for advanced search usability.

Search Results

12. Zero results presentation
13. View all
14. Grid vs. list view
15. Searchandizing
16. Product presentation
17. Quick view / image zoom

Zero results presentation

How you present “zero results found” is important. Contrast a page like this:

With these…

Drugstore.com does not carry the Bumble and Bumble line, but is tweaked to suggest products similar to that brand.

Sears reminds searchers of telephone, live chat and email contact options if customers need a hand, while populating results with products “related to current search.”

Victoria’s Secret acknowledges there were no search results found for “Linda Bustos,” but suggests a few possible corrections, and failing that, shows me the top 10 searches – I just may be interested in.

Of course, a little humor never hurts – if it’s in line with your brand personality…

View all

Rather than clicking through each and every page of results, it’s helpful to have a “view all” link. Every site should have this feature!

Grid vs. list view

Some sites allow you to toggle between grid and list presentation, like Home Depot:

Searchandizing

Merchandising on search pages may include keyword-triggered banners, but can also include features like best-selling items above regular search results.

The term also refers to the way you want your search results presented. Some search tools allow you to apply weighted scores to product conditions, for example, rank results based on relevance [40%], margin [20%], stock level [20%], sales velocity [10%], customer rating [10%]. Veering away from pure relevance-ranking is controversial, but it can produce “better” results, especially if your site search receives a lot of general “head” terms that return a very large number of matching items.

Product presentation

How you present your product listing can have a huge impact on click through. The more information you can expose pre-click, the better the customer can judge which products they want to view.

The worst search presentation I’ve seen in ecommerce is with large enterprise software sites. They are notorious for using Google-style presentation which serves every matching result from the entire site (even when you search only the store), with no demarcation of which are product results and which are documents. This is the extreme example of what not to do:

Newegg has a better presentation for software products – including scannable bullet points that include O/S compatibility, system requirements and return policy, along with a direct add to cart button and price/shipping information.

Radio Shack includes a brief product description, star ratings, stock availability and an “add to wishlist” button.

But presentation really depends on what will sell your product best. Software is different from cosmetics, is different than books, is different than clothing. People shop for apparel visually, and Gap’s extra large thumbnails speak more than bullet point descriptions:

Land’s End allows you to see color swatches and change the color of the thumbnail image right from search results:

QVC highlights video content, comparison tools, special offers like “Try Me Price” and persuasive value propositions like “Over 1 Million Sold” and “Customer Favorite.”

Endless includes sale prices in red and applicable shipping promos:

There’s many ways you can pimp your results presentation. Whenever possible, include price/sale price, thumbnail images and star ratings. Then, ask yourself these questions:

Choose your presentation features according to the products you sell, and use the above as inspiration.

Quick view

Quick look tools allow you to view details without leaving the search page.

It’s essentially a fully functional, pop-up product page.

Bonus features

18. Autoappend
19. Saved searches
20. Discussions
21. Subscribe by RSS
22. Check store availability

Autoappend

An alternative to paginated results and view all links, Backcountry.com autoappends results with more results when you reach the end of the page. No clicks required. The only downside is it can take a long time to scroll back to the top.

Saved searches

For some sites, saved search is a nice to have, like Endless.com (below), for others, it’s crucial – think B2B and complex sales that require product configuration.

Discussions

Apple.com and Sears integrate support and community content alongside product results. While this may clutter the page and reduce click through, it also exposes the depth of content the site offers that can support the purchase decision.

Subscribe by RSS

Some sites like Newegg and Ebay allow you to subscribe to a custom search result by RSS feed. This is especially helpful in a marketplace like Ebay where new long-tail products appear and disappear frequently.

Check store availability

Multi-channel retailer Barnes and Noble allows customers to find products in-store directly from search results. Innovative!

This collection of search features is not a checklist for perfect search, rather an inspiration board. Some of these features are must-haves – conventional search box placement, filtered navigation, sort-by tools and view all links. Not every idea in this post will be appropriate to your business or customer, but I hope it gives you some ideas of how you can improve the usability and presentation of your search results.

You may also be interested in 15 Things to Ask Your Site Search Vendor.

Customers can create a custom bundle at the lowest price by entering multiple ISBN numbers in Advanced Search.

While this makes sense for a site like Alibris which is a marketplace of competing sellers (with cheap, cheap, cheap prices), this approach can have application to other types of businesses. For example, you could build custom bundles based on attributes like highest star rating. On a telco site, a customer could enter a mobile handset model and click to find a bundle based on lowest prices or highest star ratings.

Other cool stuff I’ve blogged about online retailers doing include:

How to Grow Your Email List from Your Shopping Cart

Getting Digital With Physical Goods

RueLaLa Uses Calendar-to-Action in Emails

A Simple Way to Promote Your Loyalty Program

Prescription for A Targeted Shopping Experience: Drugstore Dot Com

Viva innovation and creativity!

Visual Search

1. Retailers with large product catalogs

Like.com is an affiliate shopping site that aggregates fashion items from a large number of retailers, and is an example of how helpful a visual search tool can be as an alternative to other forms of filtered navigation. Clicking on any product’s Visual Search button re-sorts a page to show items that most resemble the item clicked. This helps customers find items they like faster. It can also improve conversion. Say a customer likes a handbag that appears on the first page of your “Handbags” category, but the price is too high for her. A simple visual search may expose hidden gems that fit her budget, but may have appeared on page 14 of your category results. EyeAlike is a tool already available for retailers who want to use visual search on their sites.

Image Recognition

2. Eyewear

I blogged before about EyeBuyDirect’s Wall of Frame which has become a big hit with its customers. The Wall of Frame is a collection of photos customers submit of themselves using the eyewear retailer’s try-before-you-buy tool.

Imagine uploading a picture of yourself and allowing face recognition to filter the Wall of Frame to people with your face shape. You could find a pair that flatters your face without trying random styles on with the tool, then try them on your own photo after you found one that you liked on another’s photo. The less time customers have to spend searching for a good pair of glasses, the more likely they are to convert.

3. Apparel retailers

MyShape is a site that offers “custom shops” to members based on their style preferences and their actual body measurements. This takes the guesswork out of finding brands and styles that fit, because the whole catalog is filtered based on what will look good on you. You can fill in a full profile including all of your body measurements, but if you’re lazy you can just filter the shop by SHAPE (each letter applies to a different body shape). You could upload a photo of yourself dressed in black and have image recognition determine what shape you are.

4. Home hardware

Imagine you could locate replacement parts for appliances and home tools. Upload a photo of a drill and let the system detect the make and model, taking you to a page with the right accessories/bits for that tool.

5. Mobile phones

Like home hardware, you could upload a photo of your cellular phone and be matched with compatible accessories. (Think of a customer who buys a second-hand phone and doesn’t know the exact make or model).

6. Gifting

Say you have to buy something for your mother in law. Snap a picture of her good china and you can find and purchase an item from that exact set.

Amazon’s already using image recognition in their mobile application, just snap a photo of any product at home, on the street or in brick-and-mortar stores with your device’s camera and match it to products on Amazon.com. There’s no reason other online retailers couldn’t benefit from a similar tool.

Truly the possibilities are exciting and endless, but we still don’t see image recognition used much in practice today. Perhaps in 5 years it will be standard across online stores?

Black Forest Decor still has a modest sized search box when you compare it to the trend of super-wide boxes we see on the likes of Linens N Things, Overstock, Sears and PC Mall:

Black Forest Decor

Linens N Things

Overstock

Sears

PC Mall

Certainly you don’t want a box so small your customers have to search for the search box! And enlarging your search box, making it more prominent in design, styling, “Search” button or placement, leads to higher search box use, less site abandonment and higher conversion. That makes sense.

But is there such thing as too big? I believe the answer is “yes” when the search box is so big it looks like a banner ad, or otherwise fades into the background of the other elements on your page. It’s possible that’s the case with the sites above.

As always, it’s best to test a bunch of sizes and placements before you decide which search box is right for your site.

Advanced search is rare

Advanced search is rare in B2C ecommerce (aside from Book/DVD sellers). You’ll find it more often on B2B sites, marketplaces with thousands of SKUs, or for specialized products.

For most ecommerce sites, filtered navigation is better for users than advanced search. Searchers can quickly scan available filter options and refine results without leaving the search results page. Because “Advanced Search” is often overlooked (a tiny text link), or avoided because it sounds difficult, more searchers will actually use the filtered navigation.

Filtered navigation has been around for years in ecommerce, and Google has recently added filters into its search results:

Do you need advanced search?

Though filtered navigation typically covers what advanced search is supposed to do, there are cases your business might require advanced search in addition to filters:

1. If your filtered navigation can’t accommodate all the things your advanced search must do.
2. If an advanced search function is table stakes in your industry. Not offering what your customers are used to forces them to learn a new process, which may hurt your site’s effectiveness.
3. If a guided, stepped process where the options are configured at once (rather than one-by-one with filtered navigation) makes the most sense (e.g. when your customer is “hunting” vs. “browsing”).

Advanced search usability tips

1. Remember, you don’t have to name it “Advanced Search”

Unless your industry demands “Advanced Search,” you can soften the label like Orbitz’ “Expand search options,” sounds more useful than complicated:

Orbitz appends “Expand search options” with examples of what to expect from it (preferred airlines, first/business class, etc.)

2. Provide instructions

Most people will gloss over text, but a brief description of how your advanced search works can be helpful. Keep instructions as concise as possible, and link to more information if necessary. Avoid hijacking searchers to a new page or pop up window to get detailed instructions by using Javascript hover effects or “plus-box” expand/collapse, like Lexis Nexis:

After expanding, you can collapse “Hide Search Tips”:

You can also explain individual search criteria with mouseover, like Travelocity:

3. Explain jargon

AbeBooks understands only the geeky will know what “Boolean Search” means, and provides an explanation link:

4. Test a stepped process

Like the checkout process, numbering steps may help searchers through the advanced search process. It may also hinder by adding to the perceived difficulty of the form (it really depends on how your advanced search tool is designed). It’s a good idea to test this to see what works best for you.

5. Don’t style Cancel or Reset buttons alike

Careless Web users can easily wipe out their inputs by hitting the wrong button when they look exactly the same and are given the same visual “weight.”

AbeBooks in example 3 does it much better, styling the Find Book button differently than the Clear Fields link.

6. Choose button labels carefully

This example uses “Search” and “Continue Shopping.” It’s not clear if “Continue Shopping” means abandon advanced search or continue.

7. Let users know what’s required vs. optional input

You can do this by separating optional criteria into its own section:

Or by using radio buttons for mandatory items and checkboxes for optional (this is a web convention):

8. Don’t use too many “Go” buttons

“Go,” “Search,” “Submit” – the label doesn’t matter. Showing too many buttons makes it confusing and is unnecessary. Stick to one at the end of the form.

Remember, your Go/Search/Submit button is a call-to-action, and button color, shape and size affects conversion. This applies to advanced search submission as well, so test out different button designs:

9. Consider different categories may require different advanced search design

Amazon recognizes that books have different search attributes than magazines, music, classical music, DVDs and toys/games. So, it offers slightly different advanced search forms for each. You can toggle between them from the same page. Here are a couple examples:

The attributes for books are different than those for classical music:

And classical music to those from movies/DVDs:

While this is significantly more work, it may be suitable for your business if it reduces the “noise” of having one form that tries to accommodate everything.

10. User test

While you can certainly conduct A/B or multivariate testing, there are reasons why user testing with a small sample of your target customers is better for advanced search.

First, if your advanced search is rarely used, it could take years before you find a statistically significant winner.

Second, advanced search functionality is more complex to design and code than a simple home page layout or cart button design. You want to test the usability of the advanced search process, not just the impact of design elements or copy on conversion. User testing with a small sample of your target customers will help you identify major gaps in usability, and give you insight on what to “fix” or what features to add. Have users test your existing tool against competitors’ or other sites’ advanced search. This saves redesign and development resources in early stages until you understand where users are succeeding vs. failing.

11. Offer saved searches

While this is an advanced feature, it’s very helpful for B2B ecommerce sites and products that have longer days-to-purchase cycles.

Because advanced search is one of the most difficult pieces of an ecommerce site for users to figure out, if it’s essential to your business, it’s essential to invest in advanced search usability.