Does My Website Need a New Search Tool?

Your website probably has a search bar: whether it came with your CMS platform or whether your technical team spent months designing it. But deciding to revamp your site search isn’t exactly like deciding to redesign your website. It can be difficult to determine when the change is worth it. You can’t always just glance at your search and use your gut to determine it’s relevancy.

Even during stable times, figuring out the future of your search is a tough question. During a pandemic, when your company is moving in so many directions at once, it’s even harder! That’s why we assembled the below series of five questions to determine whether your site’s search needs some major improving.

1. Are you spending time helping people find information easily located on your website?

Here is an exercise: think about the questions your help center, your contact form, or your business email address receive most often. What are the common themes? Are they complex, difficult questions, or are they simple questions that could be answered with information available on your website?

If you find that your team is spending a lot of time dealing with the latter, that could mean your search is not effectively helping users.

2. Do you have a low CTR or an abundance of ineffective searches?

This is the most obvious factor! If your analytics show a CTR that is incredibly low, a new search can help with that by increasing relevancy! Similarly, if you see many ineffective searches for terms that SHOULD be serving results, a new search with better AI can fix that.

So take a look into your analytics or your search’s dashboard. If you are unhappy with the metrics you see there, try shopping around. Search technology has grown so drastically even in the last three years. If you are not working with a search platform that prioritizes machine learning, you can really improve your website performance by selecting a new one.

3. Has your website grown substantially bigger or more complex since implementing your current search?

A website redesign often prompts a change in site search technology – it’s often an easy opportunity to assess all of your technology. On the other hand if you haven’t redesigned your website in a few years, you may think you’re golden. But let’s think about the recent history of your website: have you added a large amount of pages, information, or navigation items to your website?

If so, you may have effectively redesigned your website over a longer course of time. So your needs as pertains to website search may be drastically different than they were before.

4. Do you want to add your search to an intranet or connect multiple platforms under your search?

When your company was younger or less complicated, it was likely you just needed a search to help people navigate your website. But maybe now your Intranet or internal resources are growing. Maybe you’ve found employees need help maneuvering through the information you have for them. Or maybe (lucky you!) you now have information across multiple platforms, and you want it all to be accessible under one search.

There’s a possibility that your current search could solve for all those problems. But that’s a big ask, and you’re may be more successful searching for a comprehensive platform that understands your new needs.

5. Is it difficult to make changes or improvements to your search results?

Last but not least: does it take you more than 10 minutes to change your search results or add new content to your search? If so, that’s a big indicator: it’s time for a new, easy to use search. Using an out-of-the-box tool like Cludo means there’s no need to involve developers or your IT team for easy changes.

If the answers to these questions has you wondering whether or not to update your search, contact us for a platform demo!