Faceted search: Show more/show less filters vs Summary + Edit

Question

Consider the case of hotel search, where you have a few filters that everyone uses but in total you may want people to have ~20 or so available.

On the results screen, I don't want to show all 20, because that would greatly increase the "noise" on the page and distract from browsing results. So then the question is, what to show:

Option 1: Show more/show less

On the results page, show the most common filters (dates, # of people, etc) and then have a "show more" button that expands or somehow other exposes the remaining filters.

Option 2: Summary + Edit

On the results page, show a text-based summary of filters with an "Edit" button. e.g. it might say "21/10/2015 - 23/10/2015 for 2 Adults. Non-smoking, 30 sqm+, and three other filters" and then an Edit button which would expose all of them for editing

Answer 1

Assuming users already entered the filter information before landed on the result page (e.g. most sites like http://www.hotwire.com/ have initial form before hitting the search page), it's unlikely that users will need to tweak the provided info again (look into your metrics if any). However, it is more likely for users to modify secondary filters that are specific to the result (e.g. ratings, price range, etc..).

What you're looking for maybe a combination of the two:

• Use option 2 for user provided info such as date, number of adults, etc..
• Use option 1 for secondary filters such as ratings, price, etc..

One example will be from Expedia, they display the user provided info at the top in sentence form with the option to edit. The rest of the filters are only related to filtering the existing results.

Answer 2

The best practice I've used and observed elsewhere is to expose all available filters that are valid for the search, but collapse those that are rarely used. The LinkedIn search is an example of this tactic:

I was surprised that BestBuy isn't doing anything in this area. If you provide a query with matches in many different categories, they fully expose all facets. Only when you refine by category do you see some of the faceting options drop off (because they are no longer valid for the returned results).