The search function on your Lakeland website design is an important aspect of any website that needs it. A good search function can help users and site visitors find the information that they’re looking for with minimal difficulty. This is especially true for websites that handle a significant amount of content, such as eCommerce sites, article sites, and blog sites. Because there is no much content to go through, a search function will definitely be of significant use to those who visit these types of sites.
However, there may be times when your users search for something that cannot be found on your website, and this will return a “No Results” page. While there is not much you can do about the missing item/article/keyword, you can make it less disappointing for the users when they realize that they can’t find the information that they’re looking for.
Because the user cannot find what they’re looking for, this may hurt your users’ experience, and affect your site’s statistics. Ideally, you’d prefer if your users could find exactly what they were looking for every time, however, there are times that this cannot be avoided, hence the need for a “No Results” page. So in order to improve your site’s user experience in the event of a “No Results” page, here are some ways you can improve on this.
Of course, ideally, the best outcome of improving on a “No Results” page is to prevent your users from having to encounter it. You can improve and optimize your site’s search function in order to help your user’s find what they’re looking for. Or you can look into implementing a system that returns partial matches. It might not be exactly what they’re looking for, but it may be close to it, which is better than nothing.
Another thing to help your “No Results” page is by designing it in such a way that it empathizes with your users when they encounter it. When a use encounters this page, they shouldn’t have to feel as though the lack of results is their fault. This can be done with an animation or a message that says something like, “Ooops, that didn’t work, let’s try that again”. This helps humanize your site, and gives them something to focus on aside from the lack of results.
As mentioned before, another way that you can help users when they encounter a “No Results” page is to give them a partial match for their search results when that page pops up. You can also offer alternative suggestions on which section or alternative keyword that they can use which may be helpful to them. By offering a suggestion to the user, you help them find something related to what they’re looking for.