Search
November 2023
A search feature is an indispensable tool for any website. It allows visitors to find information without laboriously navigating through all of your pages.
For a personal site, it ensures that your audience can quickly access the content they’re interested in, improving the user experience and engagement.
Whether someone is looking for a specific article, a project you’ve worked on, or any other information, the search feature simplifies their journey and contributes to a more user-friendly and navigable website.
With that in mind, let’s get on with it!
Everybody knows Google. Everybody knows search, but search by itself isn’t enough. Search is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of facets and sorting options.
Facets
Facets provide a structured way to filter search results based on specific attributes or categories, allowing users to narrow down their search and find precisely what they’re looking for. But, what’s a facet exactly?
A facet is
any of the definable aspects that make up a subject
For a search engine, facets are a way to define a set of filters for your content. It’s up to you to understand how to slice your content.
A good way to start is by using the categories you have already defined. The categories slice the content in sets that makes sense for you. They’re based on the things you want to share with your audience, so they’re the perfect candidate for a facet.
Then, it’s a matter of thinking like your audience. Would they like to find out all the tutorials in your site that are related to Jekyll? Would they like to be able to see a list of articles that talk about diátaxis? You need to come up with your own questions and answer them. For example, if you are selling cars, popular facets can include colour, model, manual or automatic, etc. Usually, those facets are common content features that are useful for your audience.
For this site, the type of article as defined in diátaxis makes sense as another facet. That would be tutorials, explanations, how-to guides, and reference documents. Lastly, the tools used in tutorials, or the tags for the articles are also good candidates for facets.
One more thing about facets. Facets target active users. They allow the user to reduce the items until they find what they’re looking for. The problem is that a person that visits your site for the first time is unlikely to know what they’re looking for. They most likely want to see some content first. For this type of visitor, it’s important to present the correct content and sorting is the correct tool for this problem.
Sorting
Sorting is a way to present the same content in a way that’s most useful to the consumer of the content.
Coming up with what’s “most useful” is the tricky part here. Amazon uses sorting by featured content by default, but they also have cheaper first, most expensive first, newest articles and better reviewed content. Apple doesn’t allow you to change the sorting of their search results. Two different companies and two different strategies.
What are good sorting methods for a personal site? Again, you need to think about your audience and make a decision. Some options that are most of the time good are newest first and popularity. Usually you want visitors to find your most up to date content, not that article that you wrote five years ago. Still, it’s always good to give them the option to see your most successful content.
That’s all!