One of the most important aspects of an ecommerce Web site is its product search. How your search results page is designed, and what it offers, are very important in terms of providing the results customers want. And as customers continue to expect more personalized results, they will create product searches that are increasingly narrow. It is important when listing your product offerings to include specific descriptions of color, size, material and brand. This way, when your customers search for specific results on your ecommerce Web site, they will be able to find what they are looking for without wading through page after page of results.

I really enjoyed this search page from Timberland when searching for “brown waterproof hiking boots.”

The design is clean and uncluttered. And it includes these important elements of a search results page:

• The results are refined to the color brown.
• Option to sort the results in different ways (price, best-sellers, etc.).
• Sidebar contains options to refine the search, including price range, sizes, styles and other options.
• Prices of items clearly shown.
• Pictures of the products.

A search for “black dress donna karan” on Macy’s effectively limits the search results to products which only include these attributes. It also offers the option to “compare” the items listed.

Of course, what happens when your search results come up empty is also very important. Swell offered rather lackluster results when my search for “black billabong swimsuit” didn’t return any results:

Compare that to the Dick’s Sporting Goods page (”black billabong swimsuit”):

Note that Dick’s Sporting Goods offers practical tips to help you refine your search, as well as offering specific search options for brands or to browse by sport.

Here are more examples of search results pages from different ecommerce Web sites. Which are good examples? Which are bad? What are some of the features you like to see on a search results page when dealing with attribute searches? Let us know in the comments.

“tire repair kit”

“Joe’s wide leg jeans”

“black powermac”

“framed Thomas Kinkade”

“new release action adventure”

“catherine wool black”

“oak coffee table”

“gmat test preparation”

“chocolate popcorn”

“white maytag dryer”

“black mission coffee table”

“black heel sandals”

“black coat columbia”

“levi blue wide leg jeans”