Web search sets the bar for Europe`s site search, but not all sites deliver

Virtually all online European consumers – 97% -- use search engines to find information, and in the process they’ve come to expect the same utility from site search. But in many cases, site search functionality isn’t equal to that task – more than half of those reviewed by Forrester Research last year didn’t meet Forrester’s standard for site search engines and search interface.

Forrester’s report, “It’s time to update site search functionality,” focused on 179 European sites. The report determined that European consumers new to a site most often go straight to site search, and if they don’t find what they want immediately, an average 13% of consumers will go to another site – more than that in southern European counties. “This means a lost opportunity to establish a relationship with or gain revenues from the customer,” says report author and Forrester analyst Iris Cremers.

Overall, Forrester found, 56% of the sties it reviewed fail to support users’ goals. Among them, Volkswagen’s Danish site, for example, does not allow users to search at all, while other sites search engines may not return the results searchers want. Some sites don’t deliver the basics on the search function, such as removing unnecessary steps from the process. The web site of United Kingdom merchant Marks & Spencer, for example, shows users what they’ve just searched for, but doesn’t let them conduct a second search immediately.

“As online consumers are accustomed to using effective search engines like Google in their daily lives and are more likely to search an unfamiliar site than browse it, site owners have to make an effort to live up to their customers’ search engine expectations,” Cremers says.