A Preview of our upcoming study on Increasing Site Search Clicks
Here at Yext, we’re constantly testing Answers to improve the end user experience with search. With the launch of the Overlay (the fastest way to get a Yext search bar on your site) it was time to revisit some past work around search clicks. This time, we included many styles of the Overlay and compared it to the rotating placeholder text search bar.
Our 2020 study of how search bar design affects how often it is used.
The methodology
We gave 232 participants 6 information tasks to solve on yext.com. 40% of the participants (91) were given the rotating search bar and the remaining 60% were divided into 4 groups (~35 per group), each with a slightly different style of the Overlay.
We measured accuracy, and the likelihood to use search for each task.
The results
Task accuracy was similar across groups, but percent who searched was dramatically different depending on the style of the Overlay.
Especially when looking at the task level, we can see that the two highest performing search bars – rotating placeholder and Overlay with text – were truly equal.
TL;DR
- When using the overlay, make sure to add text to your button. This can be configured using the button.text attribute in the Overlay script.
- If you’re not adding text, it’s best to use the overlay in conjunction with in-page search bars to improve search volume
Look out for the updated Search placement study in the coming weeks!