{"id":8178,"date":"2023-06-23T21:11:56","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T15:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/razorpay.com\/learn\/?p=8178"},"modified":"2023-06-23T21:12:51","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T15:42:51","slug":"building-a-flawless-search-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/razorpay.com\/learn\/building-a-flawless-search-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Flawless Search Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Search is the most basic requirement while designing documents, writing blogs or developing a documentation website. Users often read your documents or visit your documentation website to find specific information. Undoubtedly, search is of paramount importance if you want your users to read and refer to your knowledge base and help articles before they reach out to your Support team.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1>Why is search important?<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s understand this in a slightly different way. Why do organisations invest in developing documents? The goal is to provide easy and simple information about products, services and offerings. The benefits of doing so are two-fold.<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Improves user experience<\/strong>: Users refer to your documents and make a decision if they are prospective customers or complete their actions or get their queries resolved by reading your documents if they are your existing customers.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Reduce cost<\/strong>: Support tickets can be reduced significantly (as much as 50%), and hence the overall operations cost of an organisation.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before you write and design a search system, let\u2019s check who you write for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Your Audience<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Prospective users <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">can access information and knowledge about your brand and what services they can avail of.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Existing users <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">read these documents to understand the products and features, terminologies, processes, workflows and how to perform specific tasks.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Developers<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> read the API and integration documents to fire APIs and integrate them with your systems.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Internal teams of the organisation<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> trying to understand the products better &#8211; Sales, Pre Sales, Support and Integrations Teams, New Joiners, and so on<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As you see, documentation touches almost every participant in the system. Hence, designing excellent documentation is elementary. What if the information resides in your docs repository, but the users cannot find it? The entire purpose of developing docs fails!<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Building a Flawless Search Experience<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s accept it: Nobody reads product and developer documentation end-to-end. Users look for information, and <\/span><b>search <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is the most natural way to find information on Google or by searching within your document or documentation website. So, you simply cannot afford to ignore this critical aspect of your documentation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Building a flawless search experience for your documents or documentation website requires 3 teams to work in tandem &#8211; Content, Design and Engineering.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Content<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The content should be well structured with a scannable layout so that users can easily find information.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Navigation: Table of contents, Indexing, website navigation and on-the-page navigation<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content Structure: Small paragraphs, scannable content, logically flowing in with appropriate headings and subheadings<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keywords: SEO-friendly keywords so that Google indexes your pages<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Design<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The design is equally vital as a visually appealing and intuitive design helps the users come to the page, stay on the page and find information. The search design can include the following but is not limited to these:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Readable fonts, style, colours and design elements<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What to show in the search results<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Highlights for the search string in the content<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The search window and the visual presentation of the search results<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Engineering<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Intelligently designed algorithms and capabilities in your documents and documentation website list the relevant articles and search results most appropriate for the user\u2019s intent. Your algorithm should be smart enough to find the right content and provide appropriate recommendations.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Search results based on the Search String<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Appropriate ranking of the search results<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Autocorrection of the search string<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recommended\/Auto-fill search strings<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Saved searches<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recommended search based on Search History<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Imagine your documents are comprehensive and aesthetically pleasing, but the search results don\u2019t show the correct articles. The entire search experience is broken!<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>How Razorpay Docs Improved Search<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To provide the best user experience on <a href=\"https:\/\/razorpay.com\/docs\/\">Razorpay Docs<\/a>, we took up the project to revamp the Search experience on Razorpay Docs. Search is a vast, complex topic. We have taken an incremental approach to improving the search experience phase-by-phase. To begin with, we started with the ones which required immediate attention.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redesigned search screens and search bar<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Improved content: SEO-friendly page titles and headings, meta descriptions and keywords<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Revamped search algorithms powered by Algolia<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>And, results!<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The initial results are promising.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The usability of our content has improved by improving the search experience on Razorpay Documentation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The improved search algorithm has increased the Click-Through rate for the top search results by 10.62%<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The discoverability and findability of information within the documentation have improved too, with complaints, \u2018Couldn\u2019t find what I was looking for\u2019 dropping by 20%.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Building a flawless search experience on docs will be a long journey, but not an impossible one. We will continue to invest in this and bring in more features in the coming months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The search feature on documentation is an indispensable component. It improves user experience, puts your content to work and reduces operational costs. It\u2019s time you evaluate the search mechanism on your documents and website!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Search is the most basic requirement while designing documents, writing blogs or developing a documentation website. Users often read your documents or visit your documentation website to find specific information. Undoubtedly, search is of paramount importance if you want your users to read and refer to your knowledge base and help articles before they reach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151156526,"featured_media":8179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3606],"tags":[3676],"class_list":{"0":"post-8178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech-writing","8":"tag-search"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151156526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8180,"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178\/revisions\/8180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learn.razorpay.in\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}