About two weeks ago, I went into town to buy The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki (a really good read by the way).

I went into Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street in Dublin and looked at the store directory. I presumed the book was in the Business section, so made my way up to the first floor. After five minutes of fruitless searching, I decided to try elsewhere. I’d read excerpts of the book online which discussed Google, so I thought the adjacent Computer Science section was a good bet. Yet, after a further five minutes, no joy

Time to change tactics. I went straight up to a member of staff and told them I couldn’t find this The Wisdom of Crowds book. They took less than two seconds to respond, “Oh, that’s up on the second floor, in popular psychology”.

Why am I telling you all this? There’s a direct mapping with my experience in a bricks and mortar store with many people’s experience on websites. Navigation is generally thought of the primary means of getting your visitors to the content they are interested in, but it doesn’t always work. Even if you’ve made a huge effort on it, unless your visitors can think in similar terms to you, then there’s a good chance they’ll get lost somewhere along the way.

If a staff member had not been on hand to help me out, I would have left the shop and gone across to Waterstones. Almost a lost sale.

Enter search. A powerful search facility can get get your visitors to the content they want in a fraction of the time. Where navigation fails, search can bridge the gap.
When both fail you’ve absolutely no chance.