That Search Box….Can I trust it?

Many companies worry too much about their website design – instead they should worry about their Search boxes. While I don’t have stats to blurt out right away, but it would be a safe guess that an average company’s website gets 50% traffic from a search engine like Yahoo, Google, or Ask or for that matter MSN (90% of that may be from Google alone). Now that should tell you at least one thing for sure about your visitor – he/she has trusted a search box before getting to your website. Can you be confident your website’s search engine can handle such a habitual user of a search box? Various heat maps have shown people using the search engine for a website quite frequently. So instead of spending your next million on revamping the look and feel of the website, why not work on making a robust search engine that makes the user find exactly what he/she needs from the website. Make the user trust the search box, and you will get the engagement from the visitor you have so painfully craved for.