Should the “focus” be on the search box?

Shaun Ryan CEO, SLI Systems Here at SLI, we’re evaluating whether it’s a good idea for our customers to place the focus on their search box, meaning, when a visitor opens any page of their site the cursor is automatically placed in the search box. This can be achieved using a simple JavaScript command. Visitors can then start typing without having to look for the search box or clicking on it. As we examine this idea, we’d like to know what you think of this strategy.

The main advantage of this shift in focus is that it’s easier for Web visitors to start searching – usability experts argue that shorter navigation paths are usually better. This saves a click and the (fairly trivial) effort of finding the search box. By making it easier to start searching, you might increase the amount of searching that happens on your site. Many studies have shown that people who search convert at a higher rate.

The main disadvantage of this feature is that some navigational keys won’t work when the focus is on a form – in particular, the backspace key (which takes you to the previous page) and the arrow keys for scrolling. It’s probably possible to code around these.

You do need to be careful to only make this change on pages where search is the primary form on a box because the JavaScript isn’t executed until the page is fully loaded. In other words, if there is another form on the box that a visitor clicks on, and the visitor starts typing into that box while the page is still loading, then the focus will switch to the search box (once the page is loaded) while they’re typing – which can cause a frustrating and confusing experience.

If done carefully, we think having the focus on the search box is a good thing. Google does this – but then again, searching is all you do on Google. One of our customers, Dick Smith Electronics, also places the focus on the search box – and from what they tell us, it seems to work well.

What do you think? If you have a few seconds, please take our one-question poll to let us know your thoughts (you’ll see the results immediately). And please also feel free to comment on our recent blog post on this subject – or drop us an email at newsletter@sli-systems.com.

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