Search Experience Management - Techniques for Search Success
Last week at Online Information in London, Matt Taylor, Funnelback UK's General Manager, presented a seminar session: "Search Experience Management - Techniques for Search Success". The objective of the talk was to present the concept of "Search Experience Management" and highlight the importance of providing effective and user-friendly search solutions to guide users to the information they are looking for. Matt illustrated this with several case study examples of effective search solutions and provided some tips and advice for ensuring search success.
The case studies included Skype's website search. They are using Funnelback's Best Bet feature to deliver contextually-aware promotional content within the search results that is of relevance to the user's search term. For example, if a user searches for 'cheap calls' the search results will highlight call rates from the user's location. This results in a better search experience for the user and streamlines the route to purchase.
Matt also gave an overview of an Enterprise Search Solution implemented for UCL. Enterprise Search is used by organisations wishing to search across multiple systems and/or websites. UCL's solution searches across more than 3 million documents and aggregates results from 1000's of websites, a research database, Documentum and SharePoint, giving the user a single point of access to find the information they're looking for.
Finally, Matt showcased The University of Salford's user-friendly course finder. We have covered the importance of effective course finders before, but the University of Salford's is a great example which adds a useful comparison feature which allows the users to directly compare the differences between a selected shortlist of courses.
For more detail, view the presentation slides:
