I do not plan on taking over my entire site search experience, but instead I created an FAQ page on my website where I plan on hosting my Answers experience. Currently, when a user navigates to that page they see a blank search bar with a lot of white space below it and the page feels empty.
Is it possible to have a default query entered into the search bar when someone navigates to the page? For example, when someone opens the page I want the query “How is your business responding to COVID-19?” to appear in the search bar with all of the related results already populated below.
Great question - a few follow-ups that will help us answer.
How are you planning on hosting the Answers experience? Subdomain, or iFrame?
Is this an FAQ-only search, or do you have multiple verticals?
Where are you linking to the search experience from?
In short - we can support ‘default’ queries on vertical search but not universal search. However, you can always include a query in a query parameter (ex. query=“How is your business responding to COVID19?”) wherever you are linking out to on your main site, if a user isn’t already typing in a question via a search bar. Bear in mind, this will have analytics implications.
Got it, thanks for the details! I would recommend against a default query, and instead use the animation of the search bar and the hardcoded prompts to show the user what to search. That way, your analytics won’t be inflated with the ‘default’ search, and you’ll be able to better see user intent.
That said, a better experience on landing is definitely in the pipeline, will keep you updated on any movement there!
This is really helpful - thanks. Do we have any instructions or guidance on how to go about setting up the animation of the search bar? I wrote a separate post for this question here.
Hey Jessie! Just wanted to let you and any other future eyes on this post know that Max got back to you on that question in your other post, so check it out here if you’re interested!