The Search Box is an indispensable part of a website, especially large ones that contain several number of pages. Apart from primary and secondary navigation, the Search is an important navigation medium that lets users find instant and precise information with the least number of clicks. Internet users, by virtue are an impatient lot and therefore would not care to browse through the various pages of your website to find information. They will just look for the Search tab and if they don't find it, they'll just choose to leave.

That is why it is very important to devote quality time and design a user friendly Search. Here are some tips to design Search features and deliver effective search results.

Provide Relevant and Timely Search Results

The two important features of effective search results are – Relevancy and Timeliness.

Relevancy is very important to ensure usable search results. The results of the search should be relevant to the search query that is entered. If the results are not relevant, users would not be able to find solution or acquire information that they need to. Efficient searches are characterized by highly relevant results.

Timeliness is another features of efficient search results, especially when it concerns the internet and the web. This is because users are generally interested in the latest news and happenings so that they can be up to date with their industry.

Also, allow your visitors to sort the results by relevancy and timeliness so that they can get information according to their requirements. This is especially useful in websites that have many updates on regular basis.

Refine the Results

There are cases when search results provide too much information that it becomes difficult to find data that is actually required. This is a common case with e-commerce website, social networking websites etc. because the results can fit into more that one category. For example, if you run down a search for someone on networking websites, you would get a list of users, communities and groups, or even links to content that has that particular word. Thus, it is important to allow users to refine the search results so that they can find what they exactly need.

Provide Multiple Fields

Generally searches consist of a search tab where users enter a query and are provided with the results. However, there may be cases when you would need to know more details about their concern in order to get them relevant results. Therefore, provide them with multiple fields that they can fill out or choose from a drop down menu, in order to specify their query . However, filling these additional fields should be strictly optional and not a necessity

Offer Visuals

While this is not mandatory, it can help if you provide visuals along with your search results. This may not work with your regular information based website but can work exceptionally well on e-commerce websites where users are searching for a product and they get to see a snapshot alongside the results. This will make it easier for them to find what they are looking for.