IKEA Improved Search? Not So Fast!

A recent article in Line56 gave kudos to retailer IKEA for the company’s actions to improve its website search function.

Previously, Line56 wrote: “Some weeks ago, Line56 called attention to a serious flaw in retailer IKEA’s online search process. At that time, searches were pegged to internal product names rather than situated within natural-language taxonomies. Thus, a search for “sofa” would pull up IKEA products in the “Soda” kitchenware family rather than actual sofas. The company has addressed this issue. Today, a search for “sofa” pulled up actual sofas and related accessories on the IKEA website. Kudos to the company for recognizing and correcting this problem.”

Image: Ikea

Not so fast! Let’s hold those kudos for a moment. While I love the IKEA site for many reasons, including its online help bot, Anna and the new OfficePlanner software that allows you to see what your new office will look like on screen before you see it in reality, giving IKEA their props for improving search is well, at the least, premature.

For example, if you browse the IKEA online store catalog it becomes clear pretty quickly that they sell lighting, including hanging lamps, desk lamps, floor lamps ...lamps of all kinds. However, you won’t find the same list of products if you use the IKEA search engine to locate “lamps”. In fact, this search yield five hits, one of which is actually a lamp. The other four include a trivet, a chopping board, a link to a press release, and a link to the About IKEA page.

Obviously, the Line56 folks didn’t bother to search the site for other terms users would likely use to locate merchandise on the IKEA.com site.

Other searches we ran—that failed miserably—include:

Rug - search finds no rugs available, but does find a picture hook and a press release, yet the products page lists many rugs
Pan - search finds no pans available, but does find placemats, coasters, and press releases, yet the products page lists many pans and pan sets
Vase - search finds 2 vases, yet the products page offers dozens and dozens of vases

So, while IKEA may be making strides in the right direction, it still has a long way to go to make the site useful to casual users who search for products using their own vocabulary. Synonyms also need some attention as there are various terms used for products (are they “drapes” or “curtains”?) depending on the user, their age, culture, country, language, etc.

Editor’s Note:
Shortly after publication of this article, we received this comment from Gaithersburg-based Web Architect Laurie Davis-Covin about the so-called improvements to the IKEA site:

“I was looking for a chair, an armchair. On the home page under Our Products, Chairs and Tables brought up some chairs, but no armchairs. Using IKEA search, ‘armchair’ brought up one armchair, and ‘arm chairs’ produced nothing. I later found that the chair I wanted was called ‘Poang’. It looks just like the armchair brought up with the ‘armchair’ search, but there were no further links or other help from that list (of hits). Adding an “s” to armchair produced nothing.”

More articles about Content Management : Web Content Management : Search : Taxonomy : Mishaps and Mistakes