Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Finally, as part of your persuasion tactics when presenting this to the web devel-
opment team, i suggest you visualize this in a scatter chart, as shown in Figure 13.15.
Number of Characters
Figure 13.15
Search phrase length scatter chart
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so armed with this data, we are left with only one question to answer: how
many search queries should we support in full?
i assume we agree that we cannot accommodate 100 percent, simply because of
outliers that have little meaning to the site's overall success. i suggest that you focus on
accommodating about 90 percent of your internal search queries and make sure they
fit in your search box. For our example, our internal search query box width should be
23 characters.
the site currently has an internal search box width of 35 characters, as shown in
Figure 13.16. Following these guidelines, the site could “save” 12 characters and thus
free up space and achieve optimal usability as a reward.
Figure 13.16
The search box today, which can benefit
from our guidelines
Note:
You can follow the debate on the width of search query boxes and add a comment here:
http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/05/use-web-analytics-to-determine-width-
of.html
search query box width is only part of the story when exploring visitor behavior.
let's move on to the topic of search- and navigation-dominant visitors.
