Problem Summary
Spotlighting featured results promotes the discovery of high-priority records within a given set of search results. Priority can be defined in terms of value to the user, organization, or both. It is useful when:
- The organization wants to spotlight one or more high-priority results within a result set to gain user attention, promote awareness, or invite action.
- The organization wants to convey spotlighted items as contextually related to the user's inquiry, rather than as a “related content” target or a generic promotion (e.g., general advertising)
- The user is sympathetic to being guided toward certain high-priority results (e.g., "New", "On sale", "Most popular", etc.).
Usages
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Constraints and ChallengesThe design solution:
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Define a consistent container on search engine result pages and landing pages for the featured results.
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Position the featured results to convey a connection to the overall result set and to distinguish the featured results from the faceted navigation menu.
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Limit the number of zones for spotlighted information targets to one or two (e.g., “Popular” or “Sale”) to avoid user information overload.
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Differentiate the featured results from the overall result set so that users can clearly differentiate them.
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Clearly distinguish the “featured results” content from the items in any “related content” container.
Failing to clearly differentiate spotlighted results from the natural search results may result in the user confusing the two.
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