Smart Member Search Case Study

The Business Problem

Members looking for help had no good way to search the membership. People don't type a business name. They type "accountant", "boiler broken" or "web design canterbury", often with a typo, and expect the right people to come back. A plain text match missed most of these searches, found members by their first names instead of their trades, and could even match on login email addresses. A member who could have helped stayed invisible, and a referral that should have happened inside the network went elsewhere.

The Solution

wildesoft.net built a new members-only search page with suggestions as you type. Behind it is a purpose-built search engine. It tidies each search, corrects common typos, and understands words that mean the same thing, so "sparky" finds electricians. Results are ranked so that a member's trade counts for more than a name that happens to start the same way, and searches such as "plumber in Dudley" are split into what the person needs and where.

Place names are handled carefully. A surname is never mistaken for a town, and a town that shares its name with another only counts when there's a member within 25 miles. Searches no longer match login email addresses, and the search lists are cached so results come back instantly. A new menu item, Members, takes people straight to it.

The Result

Members can now find the right person in a few keystrokes, using their own words. More referrals stay within BoB Connections, and every member's business is easier to discover.

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