"Animals follow a physical scent to look for food. Humans, similarly, follow an online scent trail that is made up of key words, images and other cues. When those words and images are closely related to the information we're seeking, the scent is strong and we continue on that path." - Pirolli's concept of "information scent."
Internal search is distinctively different for travel websites where it is most often form based (aka advanced) rather than keyword search. Further the results are heavily faceted and there is lot of refinements possible both on the search widget and the results page.
All above and given that for travel, search is almost universal method of finding things, makes it very important that it is optimized to offer best user experience and maximum conversion.
The analysis is broken down into two parts –
Part 1 – Search Widget Performance
Your search widget will mostly comprise of essential components (eg for hotels – destination and dates are required) and optional advance refinements (eg. Star rating, Rate Preference etc.) You cannot do much with required components but there is lot of opportunities to play around with refinements and how you present them in your search widget.
DAA members, go here to view full recipe.
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Abhinav Sharma
Nordics
Lehi UT
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