It all started with a search bar. The whole internet works on a search bar. But Search bar is also crucial for functioning and usability within the system. You will find almost every website, software uses search bar to some extent.

They define the secondary flow(sometimes it can be primary too) of user-experience for that system.

Search bar can be structured with three elements — Query, Suggestions and Result

Query

Queries are of two types — Keyword and Sentence. In websites and within system search queries are most likely to be keyword.

It is important to know what kind of queries users will be asking because search algorithms differ in their approach based on the use-case. Some may try to match initial characters or words. Others may try to search for keywords.

Suggestions

Have you noticed yourself how you behave when you try to search? Well, there can be two possibilities.

1. Type query thoughtfully and continuously looking at suggestions.
2. Just type the query and press enter without looking into the suggestion.

Users behave like stubborn, bullheaded teenagers when it comes to searching for information or products online.

And there suggestion comes into the picture.

Typical users are very poor at query reformulation: If they don’t get good results on the first try, later search attempts rarely succeed. In fact, they often give up. This NN groups’ report shows how users work with queries as they shopped on various eCommerce sites. Their search success rate was:

Global Search and Scoped Search

Functioning of a search bar can be classified into two types — Global and Scoped.

Global search works the same Google works on internet — Searching over the entire content.

Scoped search performs search operation only on a small segment of entire content. But how does it chooses which small segment for a particular query?

Popularily, there are two ways — Auto suggestion and Dropdown..

Auto-suggestion doesn’t ask users in advance anything. Dropdown is a brute-force method of scoped search.

Asking a customer to decide in advance what category they want to search for increases their cognitive load by causing them to make a decision.

Some systems may include both auto-suggestion and dropdown for scoped search.

Search Result

Hurrah! Dinner is cooked. Now the time to serve.

The hardest part to get right is the search results page. If you don’t present the search results in an organized way, you could overwhelm users with too much information. Results can be shown entirely at once or they can be categorized. I will not discuss the first case as it no sense for discussion. Categorization helps users find their goal.

I found this somewhere in a comment box where a user talks how he/she thinks about search result. It explains their need pretty well —

I personally prefer to just supply a simple search box and then segregate the results into categories if possible.
I think it’s the logic and mentality behind what searching actually means to the user.
User: “I’m looking for this, god knows where it is just find it for me!”
System: “OK that appears here, here, here, and here.”

There are still many ways to experiment with functioning of search bar to improve user-experience. For example —

Showing Search Results as Suggestion

Amazon Web Services starts showing result as soon as users start writing their query— Without pressing enter. (Suggestion = Search Result)

Global Search and Then Scoped Search Result

This can be applied when the system is not content-heavy and running a search query doesn’t increase load. Searching straightforwardly for entire system without worrying users much and then presenting it in user-friendly manner.

Decision-Making Factors for Design of Search Bar

1. Is your site or system is content-heavy? Does it need a search bar?
2. What queries users search for? (Keyword search/ Sentence Search)
3. Do they need help in query formulation? (Help might be provided in query formulation through auto-suggestion)
4. Scoped search query or Scoped Search result?
5. Scoped search query in dropdown or auto-suggestion? (Personally, I prefer auto-suggestion over the dropdown because of their functional efficiency)
6. When to show search results? (As soon as users start typing query or when users press enter?)
7. Scoped search result or not? (Always a good choice to help users find their answer quickly)