publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/550988
ILTA WHITE PAPER: JULY 2015 WWW.ILTANET.ORG 42 SEVEN WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR ENTERPRISE SEARCH your employees cannot find the information they are looking for, you lose time and money. So why is better search not implemented across organizations? The short version is that too many options make it a hard project to put in place. We suggest jumping in with these seven tips to help you improve either a currently implemented or planned search strategy. PROVIDE OPTIONS FOR HOW TO SEARCH Not all users are the same; some prefer to search by browsing, some by author and some by full text. Give them options for how they search. Enterprise content management (ECM) systems have long tried to solve the search problem, and most have built-in searching capabilities determining how information is categorized, created and stored by users. Some users will be comfortable with these types of methods, but not everyone will be satisfied. As many organizations move away from a purely native ECM environment and use other systems, repositories or interfaces in conjunction with their ECM, more users will not be familiar with the native search functionalities provided by the ECM, nor will those functionalities provide coverage for all content the users must search. Consider implementing a third-party solution to help your users find the content they need. For example, leveraging SharePoint as a search platform enables you to interact with documents directly from the search results list, narrow search results using refiners and continuously or incrementally crawl content to keep your search results up to date. OFFER WAYS TO NARROW THE SEARCH A user who has options for how to search will be happy to make the effort, but if the results are too long, the user will be overwhelmed. According to a 2014 Marketing Land study, over 71 percent of Google searchers do not make it to the second page, and the top five results account for 67 percent of all clicks. This means that if users are presented with too long a list and they cannot quickly find what they seek, they are likely to abandon the search unless they are given an opportunity to narrow the results. Ensure that the solution you select offers this capability. Look for options similar to Google's Advanced Mode, which allows users to include or exclude exact phrases or words or narrow the results based on language, region or last update. You can also look for options similar to SharePoint, which allows users to narrow results by author, date range and many other fields specific to your document storage taxonomy. MAKE SEARCH ACCESSIBLE There is a reason Google's home page features a single search box. Search should be easily accessible; users should not have to search for search. Provide the search box on every page. Place search functions at the top of a website or application where users anticipate finding it. Ensure that the search box is long enough to fit user search terms; the recommended minimum length is 27 characters. 2 3 Just like the expected organization of a library, your users expect the organization of documents to fall into a predictable set and subset of categories.