Shelter | Finished July 2025

Shelter: Solving user needs with an unmet search audit

Summary

  • I work on the housing advice website for Shelter, a housing and homelessness organisation

  • One of my most impactful projects was finding new user needs by looking at unmet searches

  • Using a plug-in I could find search terms multiple users were entering without any results

  • I solved user needs by adding synonym search results and new content

Why look for unmet search terms?

My team knew there were some housing issues users wanted advice on that we did not have content for.

We also knew that our search function is technologically limited until we could get dedicated time from developers. We needed to add synonym search results manually.

By looking at frequent search terms that had no results, we could solve three problems at once:

  • find new user needs

  • create new content to serve those needs

  • improve search performance with synonyms

Using Squiz to find the data

Squiz is a website plug-in that connects systems and tracks data. Using Squiz I could pull a list of search terms with no matching results.

After filtering out irrelevant entries (such as phone numbers), I organised the remaining 1,800 terms in a spreadsheet.

The data showed a large number of unmet searches

With more than 1,800 unmet searches I proved we had a problem with our search that needed at least a temporary solution.

I prioritised the work by sorting by number of searches, and colour coding the cells depending on what needed to be done:

  • add synonym

  • create new content

  • discuss further

Solving user needs with synonyms

The majority of the unmet searches could actually be solved by adding synonym search terms to Squiz.

For example, we had 199 user searches for 'small claims action' with no search results.

By adding this term as a synonym to the term 'simple procedure' (a legal term used in Scotland), users could now find the right content with their own terminology.

Adding new content

Some of the unmet searches revealed we needed to add new content to the site.

For example, there were 73 unmet searches for 'decant', which is alternative accommodation usually offered during repairs.

By adding a page on 'Getting alternative accommodation during repairs' - and including the word 'decant' in the text, I solved a new user need.

Impact

By using a simple tool to uncover unmet searches, me and my team:

  • helped hundreds of site users find the content they needed

  • created new content to solve newly discovered user needs

  • improved the search function of the site without using up dev time