Search Engines
Today almost every person on our planet uses Internet. The vast amount of web sites give us a great opportunity to find any information we need, but sometimes it is hard to approach a desired goal. Majority of the Internet users in order to avoid long time surfing on the web site start looking for the search field that helps to find particular and concrete information consuming time of the visitors and patience. In order to make the information searching process more convenient, the search engine should be located at the accurate place on the web site and designed in the proper way. I have researched some web sites and found a great amount of interesting examples of inaccurate design and location of search engines on the web pages. After the detailed analysis, based on academic rules, knowledge and my own creativity I have made some corrections in order to improve the quality and design of this search engines. Here I offer some examples and detailed explanations for them.
Web site of The Royal Mail.
On the button “Go” the arrow that is always used as conventional sign meaning, “click here”, dericted not towards the button, but towards blank space next to it. This combination shows us the object that starts searching process located somewhere next to the arrow. Moreover, the word “search” unnecessarily dublicated in the searching field and that causes undesirable visual noise for the web site. It is enough to make some little changes and the searching engine looks in an appropriate way.
My variation:
The same situation is with the arrow on the Jobseeker’s web site.
My variation:
One more example of an unnecessary dublication:
I removed the word “Search” from the field, and visual noise reduced in double measure:
This is also an example of the wrong designed searching field :
www.deloitte.com
In this case designers of the web site meant that after entering searching keyword, a user should click on the green button in order to begin the searching process. But this combination tells user that to start searching he has to click on the link “Advanced Search”, which practicaly will take him to the page with wide search options.
My variation:
On the Toshiba’s official web site I could not find search engine at all. I think that it is not really ethical for the company and web site with such a big amount of information. But I have found one on the previous version of Toshiba’s web site which looks like this:
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/cate.htm
This organization of the search could really confuse the visitor with the button location which visually is not related to the searching field.
Now, I want to demonstrate you a few good examples of correctly designed searching elements.
Let’s have a look at the Dell’s web site.
www.dell.co.uk
I think that this searching engine is designed on the appropriate level. While using such well-organized searching engine it could not cause any questions and doubts. Everything is clear and logic.
This is Apple’s web site search:
This is quite bold solution meant for experienced users, because this contingent after entering the keyword usually straight away press “enter” button, while novice users prefer to use mouse, but they won’t find any button to start search.
This is search engine of The BBC web site, one of the simplest ways.
www.bbc.co.uk
They did not use any additional elements, but left only necessarily ones – keyword field and button with the name of service.
One more example of simplest designs for the searching elements.
Searching Area.
On the web sites with big amout of infomation designers usually attach one more option for the search engine. It is an optional choise for the type of information you want to find. And I want to show you good exmaple of the web site where visitor could use this helpful tool – AllMusic.com
www.allmusic.com
Here user can definetly point out result of search he interested in. Using of this option could help user to avoid huge amount of information to look throug. But to get the one which he really needs. This tool could really save you time and nerves.
When you create search engine it will be also desireble to indicate the area of search. As did developers of the Cnet:
All this options could help the web site being used easily. But designers should use this opitons carefully. They should better not to put these elements where it is really necesasarily.
Here I had described a narrow spectrum of the mistakes that web developers make while building the web sites with searching engines. Actually this problem is more complicated and demands more detailed research.
Undoubtedly, even with these mistakes users could use the web site successfully but according to the web usability and grammatical correctness it cause some problems.
Existence of such mistakes could cause some troubles. First of all these mistakes make the web site quite difficult and inconvenient for operation. It can provoke user to doubt about simple things that should be obvious. So such mistakes divert costumer’s attention from the main purpose of the web site – information. Secondly, customer’s confidence is getting worse with this web site, so his confedence gets worse with the web owners and with the goods or service they offer. This could be easily compared with grammatically wrong written brochure that company provides to the customer, in order to make him familiar with the services they offer. If a person gets such a brochure, what he/she will think about this company?
Unfortunately, elements of the web site, which are created in an inappropriate way, are more likely to be seen than correct ones. While surfing the Internet and researching a vast amount of web sites, it can be concluded that the amount of unqualified web designers dominate in today’s Internet world. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to study the course of Design For Digital Media.
posted by knagornych at 10:35 AM
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