Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success [Paperback]

I've just finished reading Designing Search what a great book. I love shopping online, nothing beats knowing you're avoiding the drive to the mall, the irritating crowds you can sit at home listen to your favorite music and with coffee in hand get the bargain you always wanted. Well that's the theory anyway. I often find the browsing on sites confusing and so quickly turn to the search box. After all, it's search it'll work like Google right? Wrong! Just as with me by the time the average person gets to using the search function they've already given up on the site navigation so the one thing they desperately need now is a great search experience. All too often that's missing. In this book the author talks the reader through what makes a good search experience. He shows the user the major site search patterns and explains why they improve the user experience. There are contributions from some of the most highly regarded UX folk. This book will become an often reference that will time and time again provide a solution to the tricky problem of site search.

Currently Amazon isn't showing the book contents. I find this very annoying when trying to decide on a book. Take a look at the book contents, I'm sure you'll find something that's relevant to your e-commerce site right now.

Chapter 1 - Starting search from Zero: Winning strategies for no search results pages.

Chapter 2 - How shoppers search

Chapter 3 - Choosing the right search results

Chapter 4 - Balancing pogo-sticking and page relevance

Chapter 5 - Making $10,000 a pixel: Optimizing thumbnail images in search results

Chapter 6 - Best practices for ads in search results

Chapter 7 - Best practices for designing faceted search filters

Chapter 8 - Numeric Filters: Issues and best practices

Chapter 9 - Date Filters: Issues and best practices

Chapter 10 - The mystery of filtering by sorting

Chapter 11 - Designing query disambiguation solutes for online shopping

Chapter 12 - Introducing the more like this design pattern

Chapter 13 - Designing effective breadcrumbs

Chapter 14 - The brave new world of visual browsing

Chapter 15 - Designing mobile search: turning limitations into opportunities

Chapter 16 - Designing patterns for more effective mobile faceted search

Chapter 17 - Search on tablet devices: the flight of discovery

oh and just between you and me, there's a secret bonus chapter
[...]

Chapter 18 Search for ecommerce help systems

This is THE book on designing search for websites and software that designers should own. Comprehensive, well-researched and illustrated with lots of examples. Even touches on Augmented Reality and Near-Field Computing which I don't imagine getting to play with for a few years yet. Personalised search, social search, mobile search, recommendation systems ... it's all here.

Points out the good and bad ideas that o.e may ha ve not noticed otherwise. Excellent design patternsand a good explanation of design patterns