Understanding our users
We use a number of tools to help us understand our users better. Along with things like user testing results, Google Analytics information and key word research, data from our internal search engine lets us lift the lid on what Dorset’s thinking about day by day and week by week.
Anticipating user needs
It’s no surprise that ‘council tax’ is one of the top search terms in April after everyone’s had their annual bill, or that ‘christmas tree recycling’ is top in the first week of January. We can often anticipate what our users will be looking for at particular times of year but sometimes topics bubble up that we couldn’t have anticipated. Keeping an eye on the search terms folk are typing in helps us know when certain webpages need to be made more prominent – perhaps by featuring it on the homepage or posting about it on Facebook. Often it comes down to what’s being discussed in the local papers or on the radio that day.
Educated guesswork
Usually it is obvious what people are searching for but sometimes we have to play detective to work it out. For example someone searching for ‘wine glasses’ is probably looking for recycling information and a search for ‘Hilary Mantel’ needs to be re-directed to the library catalogue.
In addition to this, search terms show us more detail about what each user is looking for. Yes we can look through our data to see which pages get the most traffic but each specific search term allows us to read that person’s mind to see exactly what they were looking for and design around that. A good example of this is how we choose the words we use on our web pages based on the search terms being used like ‘rubbish’ and ‘bins’ instead of ‘waste’.
Users’ Expectations
As big search engines like Google and Amazon get better at delivering up exactly what we want, users expect all search boxes to have the same level of sophistication and to behave in the same way.
However sometimes we are completely stumped! Sadly we can’t help with some of the things users type into that little search box… ‘ingredients for cupcakes’, ‘bringing your own alcohol to school’, ‘how to use ebay’ and my favourite: ‘how to look after a puppy’.
