Vertical Search has been discussed for some time now but it is looking more and more like reality with the launch of several new sites. I’ve noticed a few common elements on these sites: Level playing field: All listings are presented equally, no preferential treatment. Web-wide (or at least aspiring to be): Leaves no reason…
Category: product area
Posts on various product areas that I’ve worked on including sports, TV media, eCommerce, search, and mobile apps.
Shoppers don’t convert on the first visit
This just in from SearchEngineGuide… Yahoo! and Compete, Inc. released a new study last week that aimed to track Internet search and transaction activity as it relates to the sales of retail apparel online. While the study was specific to apparel purchases, there are some interesting bits of take-away that could be handy for all…
Handling bad queries
I was discussing eBay search with a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a while and he brought up that he was impressed with a number of the changes we’d made over the past year. Flattered, I probed a bit further to find that it was how eBay handled bad queries that he…
AOL Search’s new “saved searches” feature
I’ve been thinking alot lately about how people keep track of past things they’ve found online and was pleased to see AOL’s new saved searches feature today. I think it is important that any eCommerce site or search engine integrate this functionality deeply into the user experience. On mouseover a pair of scissors appears and…
Montreal here we come!
Marti Hearst, Corey Chandler, and I submitted a course application for CHI 2006 over the summer and we received word yesterday that it was accepted! It’s titled “Faceted Metadata for Information Architecture and Search” and will cover leasons learned thru research at UC Berkeley and eBay. If you aren’t already planning on attending the conference,…
China on the rise?
The last few days I’ve been listening to the PBS Newshour podcasts of Paul Solman’s special report on the Rise of China. In his seven part series he provides an indepth look into the economy in that country, the Chinese consumer, and the impact urban growth has had on rural China. In particular two things…
Noguchi Filing System and Information Stacks
This morning I spotted a reference to the Noguchi Filing System on CNET which got me to thinking. First in case you haven’t heard of this system, it prescribes that rather than a file-folder system for organizing desk papers you simply create a folder for each day and put it on the shelf (actually on…
Ask Jeeves shares Search stats
Jim Lanzone shared a number of interesting stats from Ask: The money is still in the head: 30% of searches drive 70% of revenue. However over time there will be more competition in the tail. Average word count varies as one would expect. In the head: 1.57 words vs. tail: 5.01 words. The most popular…
New Way to Shop on eBay
I helped drive forward a program of user experience changes to our search products during 2005. The first of which launched in May 2005 as the alpha test for a “New way to Shop on eBay”. In addition to general simplification of the Finding UI, it introduced the following improvements: Multi-faceted browsing (e.g. search by…