Effects of Auto-Suggest on the Usability of Search in eCommerce

Abstract

The following study analyses the effects of Auto-Suggest as implemented on mobile Websites on user’s search in m-commerce-shops. A benchmark showed that many design guidelines regarding the implementation of AutoSuggest have been fulfilled. For usability tests, different designs of AutoSuggest have been systematically selected. The results showed that the AutoSuggest function guarantees a faster interaction with the website for most of the tasks on average. For tasks which require more time, the additional interaction time is around 10% and, surprisingly, does not result from more interaction steps. Many qualitative findings explain how interacting with AutoSuggest can be troublesome for users.