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Product Overview
February 06, 2025
Jeff Dillon
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Intelligent site search is so much more than just information discovery. From insights to personalization, its benefits are vast, yet it’s rarely prioritized over big-ticket transformation projects. If you’re skeptical, you need to read on.
Once upon a time, amazing site navigation was the gold standard of web design. Today, in a fast-paced, content-heavy digital world, people expect to find information instantly. If they don’t find what they’re looking for in seconds, they’ll leave.
Unlike retail or ecommerce websites that deal with standardized content fields, like prices, images and descriptions, higher education content is incredibly diverse and complex. Events listings, courses, faculty directories, research articles, images, videos and much more are often scattered across multiple microsites and sources of data on your university website. Without intelligent site search, navigating such complexity can feel like finding a needle in a haystack.
Digital agencies understand this challenge and often scope search into web redesign projects. Incorporating a robust site search solution early in your website redesign not only builds confidence but also ensures a proactive, holistic approach to your digital presence. Leaving site search as an afterthought, however, can lead to missed opportunities and frustration for both your team and your users.
Forrester reports that a staggering 43% of site visitors go straight to the search bar on a website. This number likely increases significantly if you consider a higher education demographic that skews younger than the general population.
With so little margin for error, intelligent site search is a non-negotiable component of a successful online experience. Instead of treating it as the last item on your checklist, make it your top priority.
Here are three reasons why you should prioritize search:
A website redesign means change and excellent search offers stability. A new site often involves significant changes to page layouts, content organization and URLs. Even the most thoughtfully designed navigation can be a challenge for visitors unfamiliar with the new structure.
Site search becomes the safety net, allowing users to bypass navigation hurdles and directly locate what they need.
For example, consider a prospective student trying to find application deadlines on your new site. They may not know the specific department or subsection where this information is located. A well-optimized search bar ensures a smoother user transition and mitigates the frustration of adapting to new navigation.
Focus groups and card-sorting exercises are helpful, but they can’t predict every user’s behavior. An unfamiliar navigation structure will inevitably push more users toward your search functionality.
By optimizing search ahead of your launch, you can deliver a delightful experience that reinforces the success of your redesign. It’s increasingly common to showcase your enhanced search prominently on the new homepage rather than hiding it behind the standard magnifying glass in the top corner of the page.
Integrating site search before or during your redesign gives you powerful analytics to measure user behavior before and after the change, helping you set a benchmark to justify what you did right or fix what wasn’t perfect.
Metrics such as click-through rates, popular searches and “no results” searches offer invaluable insights into content gaps and design effectiveness. For instance, if users frequently search for “academic calendar” but the link is buried several pages deep, this highlights a navigation issue that needs to be addressed.
By leveraging search analytics, you can:
A data-driven approach keeps your website evolving to meet user needs
I learned this one the hard way.
During a major website overhaul at my previous institution, we decided to rebuild our site from scratch with no migration of existing content. It was a true burn and build project. URLs were updated, pages were renamed and most content was eliminated entirely. While we anticipated challenges, one major oversight became clear: we had no control over our content’s searchability.
Our free Google search tool relied on crawling to index content, but we couldn’t control the crawling schedule. When users searched for content shortly after the redesign, they encountered outdated or broken links. Although we anticipated this problem, our efforts to request a priority site crawl and create a custom 404 page with popular links just weren’t enough. It took nearly a week for Google to re-crawl the entire site, creating a frustrating experience for users.
Outside of large redesign projects, institutions often face situations where inappropriate or inaccurate content needs to be removed immediately. Without the ability to control what content you’re searching for, you risk outdated information lingering online. An intelligent site search solution gives you the power to re-crawl your site as needed, ensuring accurate and up-to-date search results.
Higher education environments are inherently decentralized. Individual schools and departments manage their own content, creating a sprawling diverse ecosystem.
With each visitor seeking unique information, whether it’s a prospective student researching programs or a faculty member looking for internal resources, the volume of content to manage and update is immense.
By making site search the cornerstone of your website redesign, you address this complexity head-on. Intelligent search not only enhances the user experience but also empowers your institution to:
A website redesign is much more than a visual refresh, it’s a chance to reset your digital strategy. Prioritizing site search during this process amplifies the impact of your efforts, offering:
On college and university websites intelligent site search is not just a feature, it’s a necessity. Don’t wait until after your redesign to address it.
Make site search the foundation of your strategy and unlock the full potential of your website.
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