Virgin Experience Gifts, offers a range of experience gifts, including racing adventures, helicopter rides, food tours, and much more. Catering to every recipient in the US market.
The Virgin Experience Gifts search needed updating. As the US is a vast area with lots of states and cities, the company wanted to match the product search results against location, category, and the combined categories to form a single search input.
Lucky, there were a few sites that already exsisted, where inspiration could be taken. The user shouldn't get stuck or locked into their current location. As a gifting experience service provider, users may wish to gift to others in different states of their own.
To make it easy for users to quickly access search and help understand their current location, the search bar will be at the top of the mobile header (instead of being hidden away within a menu or further down a page) for more interactiveness.
To help users discover content easily, a search feature with popular content in two views was added: one with a set location and one without.
The results view involves a significant amount of technical work, but from a design perspective, it's quite straightforward. Results start displaying after 3 characters have been typed. The search primarily focuses on categories to provide better results than redirecting users to a separate search results page.
If a user is set to a specific location, it will be displayed in the search bar to provide context about their location or site journey. Presenting the location version of the empty search state, making it clear to users where they are searching. Then prioritise results based on the chosen location (while still matching against the full search index). Additionally, by displaying popular products to the user too.
By implementing the combo search, there was a significant impact: a 25% increase in sessions (using search), 35% more transactions via search, and an 8% increase in the CVR (conversion rate) of people using search.
