Rick Bauer over on our Microsoft Blog had a good point to make regarding search. Like him, I find that all too often, site search and search optimization come in dead last.
It’s time to re-platform, upgrade or simply join the world of Customer Experience Platform site management. You hold internal meetings where rough budgets are set. You meet with potential implementation partners and plan, strategize, repeat. But yet, one piece that I see continually forgotten until late in the process is Site Search. Okay, not forgotten, but certainly seems to be behind connecting a CRM or ERP to the soon-to-be-crowned winning web management system. I am here to suggest that short of deciding what your main web platform will be, Site Search should be next on the list. At minimum, it should be in the top five for planning and budget.
I want to expand on Rick’s comments. I see companies spending more time in both measurement / analytics as well as acting upon the insights analytics provide. There’s one exception to that and it’s search. The typical response as to why search is relegated to a low priority is that no one uses it…………. Which is a bit of a chicken and egg argument. The search is bad so no one uses it. No one uses it so we won’t improve it.
In reality, I believe if you provide an easy way to get at the product, data, or article they want then you’ve created a better customer experience. It shouldn’t be your highest priority if you have some larger issues to address. In your overall digital transformation though, search, like many other capabilities, needs to be addressed as at least a medium priority item.
