Super search

Choose your tab!
Those of you who have visited our website will have noticed that there is quite a big emphasis on search. Not only do we have the normal site search but also a filterable course finder which allows users to really zone in on what they are looking for.

Our search is run by Funnelback, a really powerful tool which allows us control over pretty much any aspect we want. Therefore, we felt it was time to use this to the maximum completely revamp our main search. Previously it returned results in a logical order, prioritised courses and also suggested any related search results. However, we've now taken it to the next level!

After some pretty lengthy development work we have now introduced a filterable search option whereby all results are cartegorised in different tabs with the amount of results displayed. The user can then hone in on exactly the type of results they were looking for (e.g. courses). This should mean no more of that scrolling through reams of text to find the specific query you want. That's it for the content of our site but we've also gone one step further...

Searching our YouTube video collection
definitely highlights the importance of
correctly tagging up our content
If you run a search now, you'll also notice that one of the tabs relates to video and this is the really exciting part... We host all of our video content on our YouTube channel and now these can also be searched directly from our site! As we are constantly updating with new videos this is a great way of feeding our rich media content into the site, and the presentation is such that it looks seamless. it also gives all of the vital information (thumbnail, duration, description and date added) so you're not just left with a title and a URL.

We're really happy with the work the team at Funnelback have done to get this up and running (thanks Sonia and Daniel) and the icing on the cake is how brilliantly it also works as part of our responsive design.

This project has definitely got us thinking about the other rich media solutions we can plug into our site search... Instagram anyone?!
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