Content Design and Card Sort, Online Print Center
An unmoderated study testing seven placeholder text candidates on a B2B print center's product search field. The winner beat the researcher's own hypothesis and shipped as written.
This office supplier runs separate B2C and B2B e-commerce platforms with distinct customer bases. This study focused on the B2B print journey. FullStory data showed heavy task abandonment at the product selection step, consistent with earlier customer feedback that confusing copy in the print flow was turning B2B customers away.
Unmoderated study in UserTesting against existing B2B customers, run fast to get ahead of competing priorities. Clickable prototype built in Axure rather than Figma for more realistic site behavior. Combined a cloze test with a card sort of seven placeholder text candidates. 10 B2B participants. Findings packaged into a stakeholder highlight reel with pull quotes since unmoderated sessions can't be observed live. Team credited by role only: Design, Research.
Missing placeholder text caused real frustration, 40 percent of participants cited it directly, and many missed the 'Select a print product' header entirely, stalling on the screen. Generic terms tested reasonably (Search: 90 percent approval, Search all: 70 percent) but still added confusion layered on top of the header-blindness problem. 'Search print products' scored 100 percent approval and won the most first-choice votes; 'Search products for selected file' followed at 90 percent.
“Search your product... so it would be great, and then I would type in what I'm looking for.”
The initial hypothesis was wrong: both the likely business default ('Please search category') and the researcher's own instinct ('Search' alone) underperformed the tested winner, 'Search print products.'
Use 'Search print products' as the placeholder text for the 'Select a print product' search field on the 'Begin print' screen.
The recommendation shipped as written.
