PrepInsta Search functionality
Introducing search functionality of blog based website improving content discoverability and user engagement
Lets’ start with the background of why PrepInsta website needed this feature
PrepInsta is a blog based tech placement exam preparation website which consists of study material for various tech placement exams, Exam platforms, Coding, Upskilling and Interview prep.
Due to PrepInsta’s strong SEO, we were getting great organic traffic—but most visitors landed on a single blog post and left soon after. Without a search option, users couldn't easily explore related topics or discover more content.
This meant we were missing out on deeper engagement and longer sessions, despite having tons of valuable material on the site.
Discovered Pain Points
Poor Discoverability
Users struggled to find
relevant blogs easily.
High Bounce Rate
Visitors left quickly when content wasn’t accessible.
Low Engagement
Users read one post and dropped off.
Cluttered Navigation
Browsing through categories
felt tedious.
SEO Dependence
Traffic relied heavily on Google, not the site itself.
No User Insights
User intent and content demand remained unknown.
Users face difficulty in finding relevant content on the PrepInsta website, leading to high bounce rates and poor engagement.
Implementing an intuitive search functionality to help users easily find content, improving navigation, reducing bounce rates, and boosting engagement.
Search bar UI seems like one of those design elements you can’t mess up. Stick a magnifying glass icon in the header, add a couple of input states, ensure a solid backend — and you’re done, right?
To design the most efficient and user friendly search functionality I conducted competitive analysis understanding how our competitors are tackling in hand problems.
Studied various search functionalities to understand common patterns and edge cases so that I am able to design search functionality which is highly functional and effective.
After studying n number of search functionalities used by our direct or indirect competitors these where the findings.
Since search plays such as huge role in making our website's user experience better we as a team of manager, product designers and stake holder did a brainstorming session and collected innovation ideas.
To improve content discovery and user experience , decided to add Trending pages and Popular searches on the search pop up.
Popular pages:
Currently due to tech constraints we were not able to dynamically identify and update popular search so we identified the most visited pages in past 6 months from google analytics and showed them on the search .
But In future we are aiming to make this feature dynamic as well, where pages will be identified by the code on basis of engagement and traffic.
Trending Pages:
Trending Pages : reflect real-time interest and activity, guiding users toward timely or widely discussed topics. This creates a sense of freshness and keeps the platform dynamic.
We had few technical limitations which had to be kept in mind while designing
After understanding what will be different states of search functionality now its time to define what essential content should the search functionality should have.
Future Scope
In future we will also incorporate videos courses which we will redirect to PrepInsta’s subscription based video courses named PrepInsta Prime.
We can also create a separate search result page where user will be able to filter out searches and search larger number of results.
If you read the whole case study and reached till here I am really thankful to you. Hope you have a great day ahead!