Is There an Ideal Size for a Search Box?
Designing a website involves a lot of things, but how often does one think of the ideal size for a search box?
Well, Christian Watson at Smiley Cat Web Design decided to find out. He starts on the premise that search is an especially important component of any site for a large online retailer.
“However, when visiting different sites I’ve seen little consensus on how many characters should be viewable in a search box, even though being able to read what you’ve typed is key to search usability,” Watson writes.
So he looked at the top 30 online stores on the Internet Retailer’s top 500 list and typed the string “1234567890” and stopped adding numbers when the initial “1” was no longer visible.
He found that the most popular range of characters that fit in search boxes was 20-29, which fits quite nicely with Jakob Nielsen’s recommendation that search boxes should be 27 characters wide – back in 2002.
Forty percent, or 12 of the 30 stores he analyzed, had search boxes that fit 20-29 characters, “with quite a lot of clustering around the average search box size of 29 characters.” Among these were NewEgg (29), Williams-Sonoma (29), Office Depot (28), HSN (28), Dell (27), Walmart (27), CDW (27), JCPenney (24), Best Buy (23), Sony (21), HP (21) and Avon (20).
The next largest group had search boxes that fit 10-19 characters. Of the 30 sites researched, eight (27 percent) had search boxes in this range. Watson found this surprising, “given how screen real estate has increased over the years.” This list included Victoria’s Secret (17), Macy’s (17), Costco (16), Target (16), Gap (15), Apple (15), OfficeMax (15) and Amway (15).
There were four sites (13 percent) with search boxes that could fit 50-59 characters, and four sites (13 percent) with search boxes that could fit 40-49 characters. In the first group were Amazon (59), Overstock.com (56), Staples (50) and Buy.com (50). In the second group were L.L. Bean (49), Nordstrom (41), Sears (40) and Grainger (40).
Only two stores (7 percent) had search boxes in the 30-39 range: Netflix (34) and QVC (33).
Watson ends his little rundown by expressing hope for a study that examines “whether smaller search boxes cause users to enter shorter, less descriptive search terms and hence reduce search usability. It would be interesting to test if increasing search box size had a direct correlation with longer search terms and better search results.”
Back in September 2009, Google expanded its famed search box on its home page. The benefit, according to the company’s blog, was to feature larger text so users could more clearly see what they were typing. It was also meant to allow for bigger text for search suggestions.
Another interesting question would be how big the ideal mobile search box should be. Baidu, the leading search engine in China, is trying to place its search box across cell phone screens in its native country. Maybe they’ve done some research into this question – or not. After all, it seems that search box sizes are a bit of a fickle matter among leading online retailers.
Sources:
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/002015.php
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/now-s-u-p-e-r-sized.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201847/baidu_looks_to_embed_search_box_in_chinese_mobile_phones.html
