Search & Findability at Skillshare
Reducing friction to help members spend less time searching and more time learning.
We lowered the time it takes members to find a great class and increased the minutes watched for teachers with new classes, incentivizing teachers to continue creating content on Skillshare.
38%
increase in class completion rate
54%
increase in engagement with new classes
9%
decrease in “trouble finding the right class”
Problem #1
Heatmap proof of what we knew: people don’t scroll that far
Average click position: ~18
Average click position of top searches: ~30
infinite scrolling - introduces more friction
Our most sought out content is ~29 items down in the results
How many people stop scrolling before they get to 30?
Problem #2
50% of our users search 5 or more times before they find and complete their first class
Knit
Knitting
Knit For Beginners
Knitwear
Knit Stitch
Knitting Tutorial
Knitting Stitches
Beginner Knitter
Hand Knit
We make most people tell us what they want 5+ times.
Problem #3
>30% of members have to click on 4+ classes from a search results page before they find and complete a class.
So what did we actually do?
New Functionality
Improved filtering UI/UX
Added sorting to search for the first time 🤯
Enabled new content types in search (see below)
Promotion of new content
Added result count to filters
New & Improved Filters
Top teacher filter (2nd most used filter)
Classes with free resources
Class language
Class rating
Publish date
Class Length
Future Proofing
Addressed tech debt by migrating search out of our old codebase into the new one
Updated the UI to a more modern look and feel and extended those updates to other surfaces via the design system
Created a scalable system for adding new filters going forward
New Content Types in Search
One of the foundations of our new search experience was planning for the future. We’re developing new content types, and for Skillshare to be and feel like a holistic experience, users need to be able to search for any of our offerings, not just classes. This is an example of how another team applied our foundation to the new offering they were working on 1-on-1 Sessions.
