In a digital world that is ever-evolving, intelligent search technology is quietly driving a huge shift in web user experience expectations. 

When someone goes to a website to complete a task or find information, they typically do so by working with the visual components of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), talking to a chatbot or intelligent virtual assistant, or by using the search bar. Put simply: they tap, talk, or type. 

While historically most users have looked to the GUI for what they want before falling back to chat or search, we now see 65% of customers wanting to use self-service chat or search. This trend maps back to something simple – the way that people communicate and get information.

It’s common to talk to someone – or something – to get information, even when we don’t know what exact questions to ask. If someone isn’t comfortable talking to a chatbot, intelligent search offers up a new option that lets them use more natural, conversational queries to find what they need. Intelligent search takes a standard feature and elevates it. 

Users today expect personalized, convenient experiences that meet their needs.

Giving people choice and control is always going to be good for business. Smart companies focused on website usability should consider offering up all of the available options, and let the users decide which one(s) they want to use. By delivering a flexible, personalized and easy-to-use experience, they can better meet online customers’ needs.

Making the Most of Your Content with Intelligent Search

Relevance is essential when returning search results, and an intelligent search product helps you make the most of your current content. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) that power intelligent search can better understand a users’ intent and serve up responses conversationally. Instead of lists of links with keyword matches highlighted, users can see actual answers to their questions, all pulled from the existing content in your unified digital knowledge base.

Because the answers are pulled from multiple locations consolidated under the knowledge base umbrella rather than from disparate data silos, the answers are more accurate and more likely to stay accurate as new content is introduced over time. That means that the articles and information that are being written to help your website rank in outside search engines can now also be used to serve better search results to visitors directly from your site.

Using Intelligent Search to Identify Website Usability Opportunities

Beyond the obvious ease of use delivered to the user, intelligent search offers an unmatched level of insight into areas of opportunity to improve your site’s usability, and ensure that users get what they need quickly.

When you have the ability to manage complex search queries, you get a rich pool of data that helps you better understand your users’ needs and intents. If you make changes to your website menu and see a sharp uptick in searches for something specific, it could be an indication that you’ve made a vital part of your site experience difficult to find. With 44% of users saying that poor navigation and design cause them to leave websites, staying on top of navigation pain points is incredibly important to maintaining online conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

Usability and ease of navigation can be improved over time when you add intelligent search as a feature and leverage the data generated to make improvements to the site overall. By regularly reviewing your site search data and working through ways to remove a step and surface commonly requested information more quickly, you stand to add unmatched convenience and value to your site. 

The best digital experience is where intuition meets convenience.

One of the foundational tenets of web usability and design is that you don’t make the user think. The experience should be easy and intuitive, and they should never feel uncertain about how to do something. With intelligent search, users can type or speak naturally into a search bar. They don’t need to think about how to say what they need, spelling can be an afterthought, and they can choose to skip the entire navigation experience if that’s their preference. 

Intelligent search returns results with context; it can answer a question directly and provide a link to the relevant content for more context.