Global search in product detail page (mobile) necessary?

Question

I'm currently redesigning a product page for a e-commerce mobile application.

The application is pretty compact: it currently consists of having one "home" page with all products in it. Users can scroll at the list of products, browse and click on a product they want. There's also a global search bar at the top navigation bar of the "home" page.

Once a user clicks on a product and enters a product detail page, from there on the user can either
1) see related products (enter another product page) , 2) see recommended products (enter another page), or 3) click on recommended keywords (and enter the search page.)

In order to go back to the "home" page, the user has to click back once, if not multiple times. I found this process frustrating for the user. If the user surfs through multiple products, it meant the user had to go back multiple times.

My question is:

1) Would it be a nice user experience to add the global search button the top navigation bar of the product page?

2) Would it also be necessary to add a short cut to the "Home" page on the top navigation bar of the product page?

3) Or, would it be better to add a bottom navigation bar at the product page, with Home, Search, and other menus.

Answer 1

Q1) Would it be a nice user experience to add the global search button the top navigation bar of the product page?

A1) It would be perfectly okay and necessary to place the global search button at the top navigation bar of the product page. It would provide a quick way for the user to go back to home page, especially for a first time user.

Q2) Would it also be necessary to add a short cut to the "Home" page on the top navigation bar of the product page?

A2) Usually a clickable logo (an icon or the site name) is placed at the top to redirect the user to "Home".

Q3) Or, would it be better to add a bottom navigation bar at the product page, with Home, Search, and other menus.

A3) The common norm followed is to have it up top instead of bottom. The reason being the way eye scans the page, also referred to as Visual Hierarchy in UX terms. It starts from up top to bottom. Check this out: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/visual-hierarchy-organizing-content-to-follow-natural-eye-movement-patterns

Hope this helps !

Answer 2

1) I think that putting the 'Global search button' on the detail page is okay. If I'm guessing the UI flow, once a user clicks the button they will be navigated to search page and after that, if a user clicks 'Back' or 'Close' button then they can just go back to the previous page(product detail page) so that's safe and working naturally on a user's expectation.

2) If you use 'top navi. bar' then putting Home short-cut is totally fine.

3) Oh...I think...at this moment, what you have to do first is that making a decision whether using Top navi. bar only or both.

I hope this will be helpful to you. :)