Search functionality -- to move or not to move?

Question

We offer a SaaS to monitor performance of equipment used in natural gas compression.

The most used feature (60% of users seek this out on arrival) of our service is to search for a particular unit to look up and view vital information.

Most common flow through the site: Login > Dashboard > Click Search > Search page > Unit Page

Proposed flow: Login > Search for Unit > Unit page*

In the current iteration of the software, we offer a search feature on a separate page, so essentially creating another step. Not only this, but the search is barely visible on the current dashboard, in comparison to the much less utilized widgets.

My question is: should I design a solution to cut out the extra step and implement the functionality into the dashboard. The quantitative data shows this would be a logical implementation to save time. Thoughts and feedback most welcome!

Answer 1

If every given user is likely to always seek for the vital information about the same small set of compressors, you might want to :

• include a "main compressors info" section in your dashboard and make it very visible, hence serving the need you mention without adding an extra step
• populate this section by default with the data regarding the 4 or 5 "main" compressors ("main" being defined based on some objective data such as size, etc.)
• include a "customize main compressors list" feature in this section allowing the users to modify the set of compressors being displayed when they land onto the dashboard
• include a "search for another compressor" feature in the section for users who, more rarely, wish to check another compressor.