Bloomfire is a B2B SaaS knowledge base platform that helps organizations share and discover information at scale. Search is the most-used feature — the core of how users find and access knowledge. Yet over time, inconsistencies in the experience and irrelevant result details made it harder for users to discover information efficiently. This project focused on two key opportunities: making search consistently accessible across every page, and improving the relevance and clarity of search results through better information hierarchy and user insight.

Part 1: Consistency

Initially, search was prominent only on the homepage through a large central bar, while secondary pages offered just a small icon tucked into the top-right corner that expanded to a small search field when clicked. Analytics revealed that many users were navigating back to the homepage solely to perform a search, and interviews confirmed that some didn’t even realize search was available elsewhere.

To fix this, I proposed introducing a persistent top-bar UI that housed search, notifications, and profile access — making search instantly visible and consistent across every page while leveraging a popular UI pattern users are likely to be familiar with. This change not only reduced friction for frequent users but also modernized the platform’s navigation framework, improving overall usability and cohesion.

After rollout, analytics showed that user efficiency increased by over 50%, with significantly more searches initiated from secondary pages rather than forcing users back to the homepage.