I built search by learner
+8% · search to enroll rate
Outschool's search was a blank box and generally not kid-centric. Parents rarely search in the abstract and typically have a kid in mind, sometimes several. I made the child the starting point.
The problem
Search was a generic bar, despite the fact that parents were searching for a specific kid in almost all cases. We saw that users with more filters converted more often. We were collecting all the key data points during onboarding.
What I did
Made the learner explicit where you pick a child, and search preloads key data points like ages, availability, and formats of interest. Shipped and tested a few versions to find the one that worked best with our users.
What moved
Search-to-list click rate rose, and so did search-to-enroll. The result reached statistical significance.