8 Things You Should Test In Your Site Search

by TestFortExpert on 05/6/2014

If you’ve equipped your site with a search facility, there are several aspects of IT software testing you should keep in mind to ensure your search works as planned and benefit both you and your visitors.

Here are 8 essential issues to test:

Ease of Finding

Ensure your site search is in a spot that’s easy to locate. Usually site owners opt for the top right corner. The search box should stand out and be associated with searching. Check if the in-box text disappears after the text entry.

Search Execution

It’s important that users be able to do searches both for single words and word phrases and getting logical results. Provide a due site response for such events as searching by the product code, entering digits, single letters, searching for nothing, entering mistypes words, etc.

Search Suggestions

If you’ve planned for an automated suggest facility, which is actually very helpful, ensure only relevant suggestions are displayed.

Advanced Search

Doing the IT software testing of your advanced search, ensure it has the criteria or options available that are don’t contradict to each other, produce the appropriate results if selected separately or simultaneously and don’t prevent the results from returning.

Search Results Order

The relevant order of the search results that are displayed to users is very important. Thus, if the results are too many, users are unlikely to page through all of them to find what they need. That’s why it makes sense to implement some ordering options or filters which would reorder the user search results through some sort order columns and other facilities.

Search Results Display

All search results must be clear and comprehensible, with relevant page titles and descriptions in place. Mind that it should be intuitive where to click for the page view. If there are images planned for search results, tests them for size, relevance, etc. Don’t forget to design the appropriate solutions for the events when there too many or no results, check if pagination works correctly and the user is always able to return to his search results.

Performance

Test how long it takes for different on-site search types to respond and display the results. If you’ve added automated suggestions in the search system, ensure it responds duly as well. Identify if there are events when the facility works slower, etc.

Mobile

Operating well on mobile devices is a must for present-day websites. Optimize your site’s mobile UX and test if your main site templates are applicable on mobiles. Ensure that all the above issues are well tested in your mobile site version just like in its PC copy.

Follow this checklist to test your on-site search and do business effectively.

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