Thursday 13 December 2007

Search Survey

We are currently conducting a survey on our 'coming soon' home page www.propertyowl.co.uk of how users prefer to search for property. We kept it simple and offered five options: google search style, advanced, quick, directory, map, quick, other. We used a drag and drop survey tool (not sure how many were put off by the drag and drop, but would be interested to hear any feedback.) and the results are currently as below.

So what does this mean, predictable response maybe, everyone is used to google search so obvious answer is google style search. But dig a little deeper – well ask a few people around town - and we found that many people want an advanced/detailed search, but made simple.

We are all trying to put more options on the map search and I have to say that some are looking cluttered.

Many years ago, I used to draw a circle on a map to cover an area I would consider living within. This was normally from a central point, such as a train station for access to London or similar. To this end, the draw and search option provided by Zoomf www.zoomf.com/visualsearch is a great step in the right direction. We were already developing a tool along these lines and you will see a similar facility on the site soon.

What search is the best, who knows, maybe ditch everything and just have a clever map search, nothing else. There are now many features and opportunities available to improve map search and what we shall be aiming towards is a simplistic search that just makes life easier for our users.

We have continued the survey on the blog, so please take the time to vote.

1 comment:

Mike Carter at Zoomf said...

Hello Property Owl,
Many thanks for the kudos on Visual Search. You will be seeing more changes to that product over the coming months to make it even better.
Mike at Zoomf