+

Rethinking SearchThis case study presents a cautionary tale on the perils of assumptions and circular reasoning.

Tom Elliott UX+

The TaskGrainger business asked the UX team for recommendations to improve product search on site. Why?

40% of customer complaints address difficulty finding products on site (the largest single issue).

The ProblemWe all knew that search on grainger.com was difficult because of our products themselves. Specifically…

Complex Products Simple Products 1.2 million Products

InsightLooking at site performance, I learned the basic scenarios business used to diagnose search problems.

Search ScenariosSearches by Grainger Item # - 33%

Searches by manufacturer # - 12%

Searches by product specs - 13%

Searches by category - 38%

Searches by application - 4%

4%

38%

13%12%

33%

Is there more going on?I realized there’s just two scenarios. When users know the product’s ID #, they already know the product they want, which means they bought it before.

33% + 12% = 45%

Buying something again

13% + 38% + 4% = 55%

Picking something new

ConfirmationFollowing up, I requested this number, which business normally didn’t track.

Of all products sold on siteProducts bought before by user - 47%

Newly purchased products - 53%

53%47%

ConfirmationNotice the similarity of these 3 numbers.

40%Customer complaints

focused on search

45%Users searching by

product number

47%Online purchases

bought before

How to Proceed?Business and UX leadership considered dozens of ideas for improving search - falling roughly into two approaches.

Add curated contentto better explain products

Make search features betterto better recommend products

But I asked this…If half our users are restocking, why make them search our product catalog at all? Where is it easier to find YOUR product?

Within all products sold(100,000’s of products)

Inside your past purchases(dozens of products)

How?Make the home page’s real estate priorities match the users’.

View the prototype

How?AND… when users click in the search field, do this…

View the prototype

ConclusionGrainger chose the traditional approach. They added, 35 search field and content-based projects to our 9 month project backlog.

You build what you believe.If you assume your site is fundamentally good, you’ll miss the opportunities for big improvement. If you assume site behavior belongs to happy users, you’ll misinterpret the analytics. If you assume projects must improve current features, then you’re stuck with the features you’ve built.

Better luck next time

Lesson Learned