SearchResults

See: FacettedClassification, NoResultsFound, BestBets



People like a simple search box. It is unthreatening. As soon as you start making people have to make choices BEFORE they have seen what the search results contain you will put people off your site (according to JaredSpool).

In the Delia Smith site, that started out life with extremely rich meta data about ingredients, portions, recipes, spoon sizes etc, we found that most people found the search form with it's many checkboxes too daunting. It was also functionally corrupt in that you could easily select "Vegtarian", "Chicken" and "Pudding"...almost guarranteeing no results (although I haven't checked that).

We removed the complexity by making a very simple search form, but made use of the rich meta data in the facets on the right hand side (see below), allowing people to benefit from and not be daunted by the technology driving the site.