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E-Commerce Search Usability
Exploring the customer’s search experience
A part of Baymard Premium access
After months of user testing and research, the most in-depth usability study on e-commerce search logic and design is ready.
Full access to the Search Usability study includes 5 reports with 49 actionable e-commerce search guidelines, and a benchmark database with 5,000 UX performance scores and 3,200 search implementation examples.
(Beyond including full access to this E-Commerce Search research study, the Baymard Premium access also include 6 additional studies (Homepage & Category Navigation, Product Lists & Filtering, Product Details Pages, Cart & Checkout, Mobile E-Commerce, and Account & Self-Service) with a total of 640+ guidelines covered in 76 e-commerce UX research reports)
This research-based and pragmatic toolset will help you get the best possible on-site search experience and conversion rate.
“Baymard produces some of the most relevant and actionable user experience research available. They really understand the needs of UX and Product Management professionals, and their deep experience in the eCommerce field allows them to offer sophisticated, nuanced insights.”
5 Reports with 49 Research Driven Guidelines on Perfecting E-Commerce Search
This original usability study focuses on how users search on e-commerce websites. A group of users age 21-56 were recruited to test 19 leading e-commerce sites across 8 different verticals. Despite testing multi-million dollar sites, more than 700 search-specific usability issues arose during testing. All these issues have been analyzed and distilled into 49 guidelines on search usability.
From this research study you’ll learn exactly what users expect as they perform searches on e-commerce sites, what typically goes wrong in the process, why it goes wrong, and exactly what changes to make to avoid these issues. In short: how to design a high-performing search experience for your users. After all, if users can’t find what they are searching for, they can’t buy it from you.
While many of the 49 guidelines will be on search logic, more than half of the guidelines are simple design and interaction changes for the search field, autocomplete functionality, and the search results page, as these elements proved to have just as crucial an impact on the user’s ability to find what they were looking for.
What you’ll get in the 5 Search Usability reports
“I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.”
Topics Covered in the 5 Search Reports
5 × On-Site Search Topics
See All 5 Topics
On-Site Search
Search Query Types
On-Site Search
Search Query Types
12 Guidelines, 62 Pages
The prerequisites for a great search experience: understand the 12 different types of search queries that users typically submit on e-commerce sites, which your site’s search engine needs to support.
On-Site Search
Search Form & Logic
On-Site Search
Search Form & Logic
10 Guidelines, 41 Pages
Search form design and function, both pre- and post-search, with usability considerations on the design and behavior of the search field itself, query persistence, search scope selection, etc.
On-Site Search
Search Autocomplete
On-Site Search
Search Autocomplete
8 Guidelines, 29 Pages
How the autocomplete (also known as ‘predictive search’) should be designed, the types of suggestions it should make (products vs queries), keyboard input behavior, and more.
On-Site Search
Results Logic & Guidance
On-Site Search
Results Logic & Guidance
8 Guidelines, 40 Pages
How to create a seamless query integration process, including how to guide users toward better paths through methods such as suggesting new queries, scopes, and ‘No results’ pages.
On-Site Search
Results Layout & Filtering
On-Site Search
Results Layout & Filtering
12 Guidelines, 57 Pages
Layout and design of search results and how to implement filtering, dynamic list layouts, search snippets, loading more results, faceted search filters, value truncation, filter naming, dynamic sorting, and more.
“The Baymard reports have proven to be an invaluable resource for us. Comprehensive, pragmatic and actionable. We have redesigned our checkout process and made changes to our category pages based on usability guidelines in the reports.”
Benchmark: Is Your Search Experience Better than Sears’ or Amazon’s?
Based on the findings from the research study we’ve benchmarked the search engine and interfaces of the top 60 grossing e-commerce sites in the US and Europe, across multiple years. This provides you with a comprehensive benchmark database with 400+ pages reviewed, 2,100+ screenshots, and 3,200+ examples of the 49 search usability guidelines.
The benchmark database is fully integrated with the report and comes bundled as part of the purchase, providing you with 60 case studies from the top e-commerce sites, acting as examples and inspiration on how to implement each of the 49 search guidelines.
Furthermore the benchmark database provides a tool for you to review your own site (or your clients’) and compare it directly against the top e-commerce sites.
What You’ll Get in the Search Usability Benchmark
“Excellent tool – looking forward to using it with our other sites and prototypes as they’re developed.”
Get your 5 search reports and benchmark with Baymard Premium
Get instant access to the 5 e-commerce search usability reports (along with 76 other e-commerce UX research reports) and the full benchmark database with Baymard Premium access.
Refund policy: We stand by our research and offer you a full 14 days “no questions asked” refund. If you’re not satisfied, simply e-mail us at christian@baymard.com for a full refund.
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“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”
“Intelligent, consumer-focused insights that are clear and actionable. The team in the room really loved the way the Baymard Institute highlighted the optimizations in the various user experience elements (copy, layout, design, calls-to-action…), from the perspective of consumer struggles. Baymard’s Usability research really complements our other existing research tools.”
“Thank you. This was an excellent piece of work: professional, thorough, and actionable for the team. We're very happy with the work Baymard has done for us so far, and I hope we'll have the chance to work together again on future projects.”
“E-Commerce Search Usability is an essential industry report for anybody in the e-commerce business. This must-read analysis contains many valuable insights summarized by an easy to handle checklist.”
“Thank you for all the value delivered ahead of our new fiscal years. Your insights not only provided a definitive foundation for our UX roadmap but completely sold our executive team on the value of expert usability insights. Your service paid for itself in a matter of days and ensured all critical gaps will be filled ahead of us running the audit again next year.”
