1. Scan the content on the Home Page
2. Scan the primary navigation
3. Try the site search
4. If all 3 above strategies fail — use Google … often finding what they need faster than on the site.

If the content is key (something they would expect to see on the site) and users have trouble finding it, frustration levels go up … fast! In this case we often here “are you sure its on the site?”

rgds,
Daniel

1) My prior knowledge of the store – somewhat sketchy as I don’t do much DIY and don’t assign much confidence to this as the store do move things around
2) Scanning the overhead signs, not all visible on immediately entering the store, so a process of eliminating obviously spurious ones like “lighting” and “garden”, and trying to narrow it down to things that might fit. I had already discounted looking for a “window locks” section as being highly unlikely to exist. I was thinking best scenario “windows” or more realistically “fixtures and fittings”. All the time I am moving around the store, refining my search (in a very non-systematic way), getting distracted by things not relevant to my search (which is of course what Homebase would love).
3) If it takes me too long, then I am likely to use the “search” option, which for a store is generally ask an assistant. Even that process is complex because I have to find an assistant, I don’t want to go back to the main desk in a large store, so I am scanning for an assistant who is a) not obviously busy with another customer (because I will have to wait) and b) looks like they might have the nouse to be able to point me in the right direction. In other words I am more likely to ask a mature member of staff than a teenager.

Where this process differs on the web is that if I find my search criteria don’t yield the results I want, then I will refine it maybe a couple of times, but then I will head back to the navigation and probably drill deeper or be more methodical about it.

But again, going back to my original point, on some sites I would almost always head straight for search e.g. Ebay, Amazon, mainly because I know (particularly in the case of Amazon), that I don’t need to put much thought or effort into the search process to get exactly the results that I want (on the first page).