Product discovery and search brief
Improve commerce search so shoppers can describe a need, find relevant products, and recover from weak results.
E-commerce · 45 min · Advanced · 28 questions
Retrieval and ranking
Which exact product queries must search understand?
Which category queries must search understand?
Which product-attribute queries must search understand?
Which compatibility queries must search understand?
Which problem-based queries must search understand?
Search language
Which synonyms should search treat as equivalent?
Which common misspellings should search correct?
How should search normalize units?
How should seller terminology map to catalog language?
Ranking
How should relevance affect result ranking?
How should availability affect ranking?
How should product quality affect ranking?
How should price affect ranking?
How will sponsored results be distinguished?
What should autocomplete show or hide?
Filters and recovery
Which product attributes can support reliable filters?
How should shoppers recover from no results?
How should shoppers recover from too few results?
How can shoppers recover after applying too many filters?
How should restricted results be explained?
Personalization
Which behavior may influence personalized ranking?
When does personalized ranking require consent?
How should ranking work without prior behavior?
How should shared-account activity affect personalization?
Which sellers or products could personalization unfairly disadvantage?
Evaluation
Which judged queries will test search relevance?
How will we measure whether search returns useful products?
Which business outcomes should search changes protect?
How to use this brief
Use this brief as a bank of questions for the conversation. Choose what is relevant, mark covered questions as you go, and skip anything that has already been answered.
Use this brief when...
Use when you need to improve commerce search so shoppers can describe a need, find relevant products, and recover from weak results.
Best used as: Live call · Async intake
- Category
- E-commerce
- Discussion time
- 45 minutes
- Depth
- Advanced
- Last updated
- Jul 21, 2026
- Scope
- Design briefs
- Best used as
- Live callAsync intake
- Design roles
- Product designer
- Audience
- Product designersUX and UI designersProduct managersMarketing teams
- Platforms
- WebMobile webCommerce platform
- Company type
- B2CMarketplace
- Product stage
- GrowthMature product
- Tags
- e-commerceproduct-discovery-and-searchproduct-and-experiencecommerce-searchcatalog-discovery