Current Technical problems

Solutions

Search results in Business Resources area go to Quicken.com small business pages instead of QuickBooks.com pages

Re-engineer search back-end so that:

1. Indexes and libraries are consistent across all servers
2. Indexes and libraries pull results from the correct source files (i.e., all live pages are included in the appropriate place)

Products & Services results area frequently has no results

Issues discovered during 3/99 usability tests

When conducting searches, users did not comprehend/perceive the difference between different search areas. Users would scroll without understanding categories and using area distinctions.

Allow user to select the type of information they want (support FAQs, business information, or product sales information) before they enter a search term rather than separating results into different areas based on information type on the results page.

Users did not see/use “…more” links (e.g., ….More QuickBooks Support) on any area.

Make link to additional results page more prominent

When users saw how many results were returned, they felt that there were too many results "I'm not going through all this" but took no steps to narrow search by clicking upon the “Specify products” link. Text and link may have not been seen.

Add obvious "too many results?" link that goes to help page that describes how to search by product for FAQs and how to enter more effective search queries.

Long-term: use consistent page-title conventions that tell the user something about the information they'll find on a particular page.

Select a product: users didn't see "narrow search by product" when using general search instead of Tech Support specific search

Require users to select a product before searching support FAQs

Some users didn’t see the number of results in heading on a search return (e.g., 5 best of 366 matches); they would then continue to scroll down the page and look for answers in other areas.

Make number of results more visible

Make "more results" link more visible

Allow user to select the type of information they want before they enter a search term and eliminate different results areas on the results page.

Users who needed help with Q&A search didn't click on tips; one who did click on tips didn't bother to read how to use search engine.

Make Tips page easier to scan quickly

Make link to Tips more visible

One user tried a boolean search: Investors & My Company. User didn’t see any cues on how to conduct search in Q&A’s

Make Tips page easier to scan quickly

Pluses:keywords were visible in results and users found search in main home page and subsequent pages when they needed it.

Continue to place search box on every page and bold search query in results

User kept repeating same term; the original search string he used was not displayed on the results page, so he forgot what he'd already entered

Add search term field to results page (use old SBC model)

Add obvious "too many results?" link that goes to help page that describes how to search by product for FAQs and how to enter more effective search queries

One user had problems with terminology when he clicked on Tips for the Q& A search: e.g. “What are discriminating words & phrases?”

Make Tips page easier to scan quickly