The Fast Lane
Discover the world of AI-driven shopping optimization and fast-track your way to increased conversion rates, AOV, and customer loyalty. Explore expert insights on e-commerce personalization, merchandising, site search, and more.
Search & discoveryAdvanced Search in Magento: Improve Your Store's ExperienceAdvanced search is a powerful tool that can significantly improve the functionality and performance of your Magento store, leading to increased customer satisfaction, conversions, and sales.
Consider that 43% of your customers immediately zero in on the search bar to find information, but 21% of them can exit your site again from the search results — possibly because they didn't find what they're looking for and are searching for another store to buy from.
But with its range of features, advanced search can help your customers find what they're looking for quickly and conveniently, making it easier for them to complete purchases.
What Is Advanced Search?
Advanced search in e-commerce refers to a sophisticated and feature-rich search system that gives your customers multiple ways to refine their search and increase their chances of getting the results they want.
This can include searching by product attributes, price range, brand, or category. Advanced search also often includes autocomplete and spelling features to make sure your customers still get their desired results even if they make mistakes in their search terms.
Give Your Customers the Best Magento Experience
Having advanced search in your Magento store can give you an advantage over your competitors, considering that 61% of e-commerce stores perform below expectations when it comes to search.
Here's how advanced search can improve your store's experience:
Language Recognition
It always comes down to semantics, right? You can give your customers a better shopping experience when you up your language game.
Support multiple languages
When your customers search for products in their preferred language, it can enhance the relevancy and accuracy of their search results. Your customers search more intuitively and find the process more user-friendly, especially if they're not fluent in the default language of your store.Account for language mistakes
Your customers may make typos in the search bar or completely misspell a product name. Advanced search can take this into account and make sure that your customers still get the search results they want — instead of a "No Results" page.
The flexibility that you get from language recognition means your customers can easily find what they need without sifting through irrelevant results. This can help to increase customer satisfaction and, subsequently, sales.
Everten: Spelling of Search Terms
Everten sells various kitchenware. Their search results for 'fry pan' and 'frypan' are the same, so it doesn't matter if you spell it as two words or one.
Multiple Types of Content
Magento allows you to create and manage various types of content such as product descriptions, blog articles, pages, and more. You can also use Magento's built-in rich-text editor to enhance the formatting and presentation of your content.
Advanced search gives you an extra advantage by making sure your customers find all of your content quickly.
Cater to non-product searches
Your search results won't be restricted to products only. Your customers can also view related blog posts, reviews, subscriptions, etc. Use your internal search bar as a gateway
Your search bar is central to your store and can be the first point of contact with your customers. By making it a gateway, your customers can easily access their desired information from this one point. They don't have to scroll aimlessly through information or click on several tabs.
Liebherr: Diverse Search Results
Liebherr is an international group that manufactures equipment and technology for various industries. Just by searching for 'refrigeration', multiple search results from various places on the website appear. For example, products, company profile, and magazines. A very useful filter on the left allows you to refine your search even more.
Advanced Sorting
Advanced sorting means your customers can sort their search results according to their preference instead of the default sorting option in your Magento store.
Support your customer's end goal
Your customer is visiting your store with a purpose, for example, to buy a gift. Advanced sorting can help them achieve this faster. If they're on a budget, they can sort the results according to price. Similarly, if they don't know the person well, they can sort the results according to popularity.
Zachys: Refined Search Results Sorting
Zachys specializes in wine and liquor. After using the filters on the left, you can use the advanced sorting option on the right to organize your search results according to top rated, product name, high and low pricing, or relevance.
Do It the Fast Way
Expecting quick and accurate search results is part of your customers' online behavior. With advanced search features, like what we just discussed, you can easily provide this to them on your Magento store.
Creating an optimized site search experience can encourage your customers to convert more, which will also boost your average order value.
» Further enhance your site search with this ultimate guide to internal search
Search & discoveryGuide to Shopify Search Bar: Add, Customize, Troubleshoot, Remove and MoreAs a leading e-commerce platform, Shopify offers its users a variety of tools and features to help them sell their products online, including a search bar. You may have heard about the advantages of Shopify's search bar, like maximizing product discoverability, but you're unsure about its technicalities. In this guide, we provide easy-to-follow steps so you can effortlessly add, customize, troubleshoot, or remove your Shopify search bar.
Why Is the Shopify Search Bar Important?
Shopify's search bar gives your customers a quick and easy way to find the products they're looking for, which ultimately results in an enhanced shopping experience for them. By reducing the time it takes to find a product, your customers are 2-3 times more likely to convert. A good and functional search bar can therefore lead to:
Improved customer experienceIncreased brand recognition, loyalty, and social proofBetter product discoveryIncreased sales
How to Add Your Shopify Search Bar
First, you need to get your Shopify search bar up and running. There are two paths you can choose: enable this function directly in your Shopify store or via a third-party app.
Enable Your Shopify Search Bar in Your Shopify Store
Please note that you can only follow this method if your Shopify theme supports it.
Log into your Shopify account and navigate to your admin page.Click on "Themes".
Click on "Theme Editor" or "Customize" depending on your setup.
Click on "Theme Settings" and navigate to "Add-Ons".
Locate the search add-on in the list and check the box to activate it.
If you can't find this in your theme settings, then your theme most likely doesn't support a search functionality. But not to worry! You can just as easily add a Shopify search bar through an app.
Add Your Shopify Search Bar via an App
Go to your Shopify dashboard and log in to your account.Click on the "Apps" section on the left-side menu and visit the Shopify App Store.Search for "search bar apps" and you'll see apps like Fast Simon.
Install the app and follow the installation instructions to add the app to your Shopify store.Go to the app's settings to configure the search bar. Click on "Save" to apply the changes.Go to your website and test the search bar to ensure that it's working correctly.
Adding a search bar will help your customers find their ideal products quickly and easily, thereby improving their overall shopping and user experience.
How to Customize Your Shopify Search Bar
Now that you've added your Shopify search bar, you can start customizing it.
Log in to your Shopify account and click on "Online Store".Click on "Themes".
Find the theme you want to edit and click on "Customize".
Click on "Search Bar".Change the search bar settings and save to update.
Customization is important because it gives your store a certain look and feel. This includes changing the search suggestions, result display settings, and whether the product description should be available in the results.
How to Remove Your Shopify Search Bar
Removing your Shopify search bar will depend on how you added it; directly in your Shopify store via its theme or with a third-party app.
Remove Your Shopify Search Bar in Your Shopify Store
Log into your Shopify account.Navigate to "Themes".
Click on "Actions" and select "Edit Code".
Navigate to the list of codes and select icon-search.liquid.
Delete the code in the section.
Remove Your Shopify Search Bar via an App
Log into your Shopify account.Click on "Apps" to review the list of apps installed on your store.
Click the delete icon of the app you want to remove.
Click "Uninstall".
Removing your Shopify search bar may seem strange, considering its advantages. But perhaps you have a limited number of products, so your customers don't use the search option, or your website is just one page with minimal navigation.
How to Troubleshoot Common Shopify Search Bar Issues
Here are some common problems your Shopify search bar may encounter and their quick solutions.
Search Icon Issues
The most common issue comes with the search icon. Normally on mobile devices, the search bar won’t appear until your customer clicks on the magnifying glass icon. If they have connectivity issues and the icon doesn't load, then the search bar will always be kept hidden.
Tip: Try clearing your cache, checking your theme, or reverting to the previous update.
Theme-Specific Issues
Popular themes like Venture or Debut come with a hidden search bar for mobile devices, and when the themes are upgraded or changed manually, search bar issues can happen.
Tip: Try reverting to old updates or contacting the theme developers.
Benefits of the Shopify Search Bar
There are several benefits associated with the Shopify search bar. Some of them are:
Improved product catalog
With search analytics, you can understand which products are in demand and push them as per your customer’s previous search history, thereby giving them a personalized shopping experience.Improved Shopify SEO
Your search pages can be a great source of SEO-optimized links that will improve your website’s ranking in search results.Design marketing campaigns
Knowing your customer’s search data can help you launch relevant promotional campaigns and give you opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.Improve product linking
Understanding your customers' search intent means you can add relevant search keywords to your search functionality, products, and collections to ensure your customers' search results are more tightly knit.
Start Your Search Today
In a nutshell, the Shopify search bar is one of the greatest aspects of your store's success and can be the game changer in your Shopify store’s performance. Once added, you can leverage the benefits from more specialized search functionalities like federated search and predictive search. As you've seen, adding and managing your Shopify search bar is easy and fast, so start optimizing your Shopify store today.
Search & discoveryWooCommerce Instant Search Makes Browsing a Breeze—Here’s HowWooCommerce is a leading e-commerce platform that allows users to create and manage online stores by offering a variety of features such as inventory management, shipping and tax options, and customer management. But one of its most salient features could arguably be instant search. WooCommerce instant search provides real-time search results, which makes the search experience faster and makes browsing a breeze for your customers.
What Is WooCommerce Instant Search?
WooCommerce instant search is a feature that allows your users to find their desired products at their fingertips within no time.
WooCommerce instant search benefits customers in a number of ways, including simplifying the search process and giving them more options to choose from. It also holds advantages for your store. For example, an effective search process causes fewer frustrations for your customers, which eventually decreases the chances of them hopping out and increases the chances of making additional sales.
Below, we discuss how WooCommerce instant search helps customers have a better browsing experience on your store.
Relevant Search Results
Every visitor to your online WooCommerce store demands relevant search results and at least 39% are influenced by relevant search results to make a purchase. WooCommerce instant search makes it easier for them to catch on to their desired products without the hassle of going through all your pages, thereby saving them time as well.
For example, if a customer is looking for medication to help with heartburn on WOWmart, they'll not only get suggestions of popular heartburn searches to try but also a list of relevant heartburn product results. This simplifies their search and spares them from manually searching through various categories.
» Learn how product search engines can help refine your search results
Personalized Search Results
WooCommerce instant search can also personalize search results based on a customer’s previous data such as search history, purchasing history, and preferences. The algorithms of instant search can track down these data points and use them to give your customers personalized shopping experiences with relevant and fast results, thereby increasing your chances of making sales.
For example, if a customer is looking for green t-shirts from Bamboo Clothing, they'll get green shirts of all styles and sizes as their result. While still relevant, these search results are not personal to the customer. If the customer is looking for short-sleeved green t-shirts for women, WooCommerce instant search can track this data and display it for the customer instead.
» Explore further how personalization can help your e-commerce business
Autocomplete and Autosuggest Functionality
Autocomplete and autosuggest are two key features of instant search.
Autocomplete allows users to complete their search query based on the letters they've already typed. Autosuggest provides suggestions regarding a user’s query as they type.
Both of these features are generated according to your database of customers and provide fast and accurate results so your customer can quickly reach their desired product. This not only reduces your customers' frustration but also maximizes product discovery and eventually results in more sales—up to 24%.
For example, a customer is looking for a gift basket on Gourmet Basket. They're unsure what exactly they're looking for, but know they want the gift basket to contain wine. Gourmet Basket's instant search automatically provides category and product suggestions for the customer to consider.
Synonym Functionality
Synonym functionality works by understanding your customers' intent when they type a query to display relevant results. This is based on natural language processing and natural language search that uses your customers' way of communicating and their context to match them to products.
For example, if a customer searches for “protective muffs” on BC Fasteners and Tools, the algorithm understands the search intent and still displays relevant search results even though the search query doesn't match the store's wording or product names exactly (e.g., "ear protection" or "ear muffs").
» Discover more tips on synonyms to drive your store forward
Take the Fast Way
In a nutshell, WooCommerce instant search is one of the most important aspects behind the success of a WooCommerce online store. Instant search possesses the power to convert users into buyers and uplift your sales, which is why it shouldn't be neglected.
This feature can also be coupled with other search functionalities like federated search to give your customers an elevated and even more refined shopping experience.
Search & discoveryHow to Use Shopify Instant Search to Maximize Product DiscoveryShopify has become a go-to solution for millions of merchants looking to sell their products online. In most cases, the success of your Shopify store depends on how well you can maximize your product discovery. Shopify instant search can help boost your product discoverability by guiding your customers to their desired products in the quickest and most efficient way possible.
What Is Shopify Instant Search?
Shopify instant search scans your store's product listings and provides relevant results in real-time as your customers type in their search queries.
This gives your customers more options to choose from, and also makes it easier for them to find what they're looking for. The result is a better shopping experience and increased product discoverability for the store.
Getting the most out of Shopify Instant Search requires taking a few key steps.
Use Autocomplete for Smarter & Faster Results
Autocomplete text is a helpful tool for getting better, faster e-commerce search results. With just a few keystrokes, customers can find what they're looking for without having to spell everything out. This eliminates the need for an extra step and lets customers go straight from typing their search term to a purchasable product with just one click.
Mastermind Toys uses autocomplete text to suggest products faster to their customers. For instance, if a customer types "star" into the search bar, the autocomplete pulls up results for Star Wars-related products right away and maximizes product discovery. This saves the customer time and takes them straight to their desired results.
Use NLP to Understand Your Customers' Intent
Natural language processing (NLP) is a technique that helps your search function understand human language and the context your customers are searching in. Shopify Instant Search uses NLP to extract the meaning behind a search query and look for the most relevant results in a large product dataset, thereby helping to increase product discovery.
When you understand your customers' intent, you can offer instant and relevant search results. For example, if a customer types "este luader" into Fragrance Buy's search bar, the store's natural language search functionality understands that the customer is actually looking for "Estee Lauder" and provides those results. This improves the overall shopping experience and increases the chances of a successful transaction.
Personalized Product Discovery
Shopify instant search can also boost personalization for product discovery by using data about your customers' behavior and preferences. This may include keeping track of the products your customers have viewed in the past and using that information to suggest similar products in future searches. By using data from personas and product rating systems, instant searches can make customers' discovery experience even more tailored and efficient.
Here are a few potential outcomes of this:
Your customers are more likely to buy products that match their interests and needs.Your customers are more likely to make repeat purchases because your store caters to their preferences.Your store maximizes product discovery and increases your chances of making a sale.
For example, if a new customer searches for a "white dress" in Princess Polly's search bar, they'll see the standard collection as a result with related (but general) search prompts on the side.
But as the customer browses the white dresses in the collection, particularly the mini dresses, the store's Shopify instant search is noting the customer's preferences and interests. So, the next time the customer visits the store, their experience is already more personalized with suggestions for mini dresses and white dresses before even starting their search.
» Dive deeper into the personalization experience here
Why Shopify Stores Invest in Instant Search
Smart Shopify merchants understand that their store's search can make or break their customer experience. With the help of its features, you can:
Convert more leads into customers
Instant search makes it easier for your shoppers to quickly find the right product without the hassle of navigating through multiple pages. This significantly increases their odds of purchasing.Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
An effective instant search solution gathers valuable information about your customers' searches and interactions on your site. You can analyze this data to gain insight into customers' intent so you can show results that enhance their satisfaction and loyalty.Increase sales
Mobile instant search reduces the need for extensive site exploration, shortening the path to purchase and increasing the likelihood of buying and spending more. Shoppers who use search spend 2.6 times more on average than those who don't.
Do It the Fast Way
The e-commerce industry is highly competitive and with so many choices, customers expect a certain experience when they shop online. With Shopify instant search, you can give your customers a personal shopping journey that effortlessly leads them to the products they're looking for, thereby increasing your conversions and customer retention.
Search & discoveryShopify Predictive Search: The Complete GuideShopify is a leading e-commerce platform with over 4.4 million online stores using its services to sell their products to customers. Apart from its key features like custom designs and secure hosting, it also offers a predictive text feature to make it easier for your customers to search for products on your store.
Shopify's predictive search feature suggests search results to your customers in real time as they type their query.
This enhances your customers' search experience and can result in high conversion rates. Plus, predictive search can also help you understand your customers' buyer persona and inform future improvements to your store.
As an industry, e-commerce is rapidly growing and constantly evolving, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer behavior. So, e-commerce sellers are looking for tools like Shopify predictive search that can help them keep up.
What Is Shopify Predictive Search?
Shopify predictive search uses algorithms to analyze your customers' behavior and gives them suggestions as they type a query into the search bar. This way your customers quickly find the products they're looking for without writing the whole query and going through different pages of search results.
The results from predictive search can include different elements:
A simple list of text suggestionsProduct images and namesCategories or collectionsPopular or trending search terms
For example, Princess Polly, an online fashion boutique, gives its customers product suggestions, collection suggestions, and trending searches based on other customers' activities.
How Predictive Search Helps Shopify Stores
Shopify predictive search is a powerful tool that can benefit both you and your customers.
1. Improved Customer Experience
Shopify predictive search offers your customers a quick and easy searching experience, which is far removed from traditional searches and helps to reduce their frustrations if they find it hard to navigate to the product they want.
For example, predictive search can remove certain language issues. It reduces spelling mistakes because your customers don't have to type out their entire query. And if you use synonyms in your site search, then predictive search can make complimentary suggestions if your customers' search terms are different from the terms on your store.
» Discover more tips on using spelling and synonyms to your advantage
2. Higher Conversion Rate
Shopify predictive search makes your products more discoverable. By automatically completing your customers' search query, your conversions can increase by 24%.
Also, since 39% of online shoppers are influenced by a relevant search, you have good opportunities to upsell and cross-sell. By making suggestions to your customers, they may come across products they didn't know you had or thought they needed.
The convenience of instant and relevant search results can not only improve conversion rates but customer retention as well because customers are more likely to return to your store if it offers better experiences.
» Explore these additional benefits of upselling and cross-selling
3. Better Customer Service
You can use the data that Shopify predictive search gathers about your customers' behavior to give them a better experience every time they visit your store.
By personalizing their shopping journey, your customers effortlessly find what they're looking for, which in turn can solidify their trust in and loyalty to your brand and products — by up to 49%.
» Delve into the details of personalization here
4. Greater Competitive Advantage
If up to 61% of e-commerce sites deliver disappointing search results, then Shopify predictive search can set you apart from your competitors.
Analyzing the data from your predictive search can not only help to give your customers a positive experience that they associate with your store, but you can also adjust and improve your business strategy, product offerings, pricing, promotions, and marketing to maximize sales and average order value.
» Learn how predictive analytics can help your e-commerce store
How to Set Up Shopify Predictive Search
You might be thinking setting up Shopify predictive search is a lengthy and difficult process, but it’s actually not that complex and can be done quite easily.
Start by installing a search app from the Shopify App Store.
Once installed, you have to give the app access to your store and product pages so it can start indexing.Once complete, predictive search is enabled for your store. Your customers will be able to use the feature right away.
What to Keep in Mind
As with any app or software, Shopify predictive search can only give you promising results if it's installed and used properly. Consider these tips to make sure your predictive search feature is optimized.
Monitor Your Website Speed
Predictive search apps are full of resources and data points, so they can consume a high amount of server data and slow your website down. This is because predictive search adds an extra layer of complexity to provide real-time suggestions and predictions for your customers.
Tip: Upgrade your website's hosting or optimize the app’s algorithms to keep your website's performance at its best.
Ensure Proper Configuration For the Best Search Results
If your predictive search app is not configured correctly, it can give inaccurate results when your customers do a search on your store. This can be because there is not enough data for the app to work with or its settings aren't properly activated.
Tip: Monitor the backend of your search app to make sure its settings are correct and to increase the data quality and volume if necessary.
Make Sure You Stay in the Fast Lane
The success of any e-commerce store lies in selling its products to its customers — but only if those customers can find your products. Shopify predictive search can give your customers a seamless shopping experience with instant and accurate search results. Your customers only have to give a prompt, therefore saving time and perhaps finding something they didn't expect.
Search & discoveryFederated Search Engine: Show Accurate Results From Multiple SourcesImproving your overall customer experience is essential to running your e-commerce store. And if you want to level up, make sure you have a federated search engine on your site that shows your customers accurate results.
Suppose you have a significant social media presence or run offline ads. When people come to your site after seeing a product they love, they aren't going to scroll endlessly through your products to find it — they'll head to the search bar first. Therefore, you want to be sure your e-commerce store has an effective search engine that delivers the best results and experience.
This is where a federated search engine comes into the picture.
What Is a Federated Search Engine?
A federated search engine is a search tool that scours multiple sources of information and presents its findings as a single, unified result.
Using this type of search engine is becoming increasingly popular among e-commerce managers. It provides customers with a better search experience by showing them results from different places, including product catalogs, customer reviews, blog posts, and subscriptions.
» Discover the differences between e-commerce and content search
How Does Federated Search Help Your Store?
Federated search helps your store deliver better customer experiences, improves reliability, and helps shoppers find more relevant search results.
Better Customer Experience
By providing a unified search experience, a federated search engine helps to improve your customers' shopping experience on your store. Your customers can search for products, content, and other information from one place, saving them time and effort since they don't have to navigate to different parts of the store to find what they're looking for. Plus, your customers may find products they didn't know you had, giving you a great opportunity to upsell and cross-sell.
For example, consider Targus's search results feature content from collections, products, popular searches, and articles, giving their customers a flexible shopping experience.
Increased Reliability
A federated search engine can also increase the reliability of your store's search results. By searching multiple sources, a federated search can deliver more accurate results because it finds relevant information in places that it wouldn't be able to with a siloed search engine.
More Relevant Search Results
A federated search engine can also deliver more relevant search results based on past customer behavior or by searching various sites. For example, a customer might be searching for a product that's no longer in stock, but a federated search engine could find that product in another store and deliver a result to the customer.
Let's take a look at an example. Urban Clothing has many different brands, and you can get results across all brands when shopping for something specific, like bodysuits. If this feature didn't exist, shoppers would have to search five different sites to find what they're looking for.
Easier To Browse
With a traditional search engine, customers might have to navigate to different parts of your store to find what they're looking for. For example, they might have to navigate to your blog to find styling tips for spring and then go to your maxi dress collection to find the perfect floral print. With a federated search engine, customers can search for products, content, and other information from one place. This saves them time and effort and makes it easier to find what they're looking for — and buy!
Take the Fast Way
A federated search engine is a must-have tool for any e-commerce store. By delivering better customer experiences, increased reliability, and more relevant search results, a federated search engine helps your store to stand out from the crowd. A good federated search engine will help you provide a better search experience for your customers and help to keep them coming back for more. So, why wait? Take the fast way and give your store the search engine it deserves.
Search & discoveryE-commerce Product Search Engine: 5 Key Features and BenefitsAn e-commerce product search engine is a "local" search engine built for your e-commerce store. When a customer types in a query, the engine indexes all of your products and uses sophisticated AI algorithms to help match customers with exactly what they're looking for—fast.
In an age where customers expect a smooth user experience and immediate results, an e-commerce product search engine is a must-have for every store owner. And fortunately, this tool is highly accessible: it can be integrated with most major e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, Wix, and more.
Let's look at 5 key features and benefits that you can start reaping today.
1. Fast Loading Time
How quickly your site loads is closely connected to your customers' satisfaction, your site's bounce rate, and its ranking. Your customers may feel that your loading time is a reflection of your service and quality. So, the faster your site loads, the less likely your customers are to leave your site. This keeps your bounce rate down (an average of 9%) and helps to boost your search engine ranking.
Ideally, you should aim for a 2-second loading time for your e-commerce store and its product search functionality to make sure your customers quickly find what they're looking for.
2. Autocomplete Text
Autocomplete text is an AI feature that aims to finish your customer's query as they're typing it. This gives them a quicker path to your product, requiring less keystrokes to get to their end goal. It also helps to prevent spelling errors, which can alter their search results and provide a less-than-ideal user experience.
Take Ruggable for example. When a user types "ze" into the search bar, the product search engine automatically pulls results for zebra-related items. This helps to cut the time the user spends searching, sending them straight to their results.
» Learn how AI can optimize your customers' e-commerce experience
3. Full-Text Search
Sometimes, your customer may know exactly which product they want. But often, this isn't the case. Search queries fall into 4 types:
Exact product search: Your customers know exactly what they need, down to the product's nameProduct type search: Your customers search for a general product, not a brand or modelProblem-based search: Your customers need a solution to an issue, but they're not sure which form it comes inNon-product search: Your customers are looking for information, not a product
Full-text search is a helpful feature when your customer hasn't entered an exact product search. It compares every word in your customer's query against your database(s), helping to fill in the gaps where the query lacks specificity or precision.
In this example, a user might type the problem-based search "organize kitchen". Wayfair's e-commerce product search engine returns multiple types of organizers, dividers, and racks to solve the problem.
4. Product Images In-Search
Images are non-negotiable to convince your customers to convert. They need to see the item to visualize if it's what they're really looking for. When your website contains images within search engine results, it speeds up the shopping process, opening the possibility of finding what they're looking for in seconds instead of minutes.
On Hoover's website, a user can type in "pets" and see multiple product suggestions as well as photos and price—all right from the search bar dropdown. This completes a mini product preview, providing in a glance all the key decision-making information they need.
» Find out how AI visual discovery can inspire your shoppers to buy
5. Synonyms
It's rare that your customer will be able to search for a product verbatim as it's listed on your website. If your product search engine doesn't include synonyms, they may be served "no results" pages when that's not truly the case. Synonyms help to give your customers as many options as possible by showing results based on similar terms.
For example, you can fine-tune your product search engine to display jumpsuits when your customer types "jumper", or denim if they misspell it as "demin". You can make searches more specific or general, like showing rings and bracelets when your customer types "jewelry".
Take the Fast Way
To capture today's online shopper, your e-commerce product search engine needs to match your competitors in terms of speed, flexibility, and problem-solving. The features we've discussed here can supercharge your user experience, earning loyal customers and predictable revenue.
» Explore how a personalized search and recommendation engine can drive you forward
Search & discoverySearch Within Shopify Collections: Improve Product Discoverability and UXShopify collections are a great way to organize and present your products on your online store. However, they're only useful when shoppers can quickly sort through the results and choose the products they're interested in. To get the most out of your collection pages and boost product discoverability and UX, consider integrating search within Shopify collections.
What Is Search Within Collections?
Search within collections is a function that allows shoppers to easily find specific items in a particular collection.
It typically works like this: shoppers visit a collection page (for example, a shoe collection) and enter phrases or keywords related to the product they need (for example, red heels size X) in the search bar. The smart collection page then returns a list of shoes that match the search criteria.
With the right Shopify search functionality for collections, you can boost the customer experience on various fronts.
Customers Find Exactly What They're Looking For
A Shopify search results page within collections can be highly valuable for shoppers. With robust search parameters, they can find the item they're searching for in the exact color, size, style, brand, etc. Collection search saves them from the virtual legwork of looking through all product variants to find the item they want.
For example, 401 Games allows their customers to not only search within their categories (like 'board games'), but customers can also refine their search results with filters (in stock, price, vendor, etc.).
» Want to optimize your filters? Try these methods
More Relevant Search Results
The default Shopify search results can be hit or miss with your customers. They may search for a specific product and instead get a sea of product pages that are only vaguely associated with the searched item. A Shopify search bar within collections can improve their experience by offering more relevant results. It accounts for things like alternative phrasings and natural language characteristics to ensure results are tailored to your customers' searches.
For example, Fragrance Buy makes it even easier for their customers. If a customer searches within the 'Womens' fragrance collection, a list pops up with all the relevant brands. If the customer types in 'giv' to search for 'Givenchy', the search functionality immediately recognizes the customer's intent and gives 'Givenchy' as the result. This removes the risk of spelling mistakes or typos.
» Discover why understanding shoppers' intent is important
Personalizes Product Discovery
Shopify search collections can also personalize product discovery for your customers by using data about their behaviors and preferences. This may involve tracking products your customer has viewed in the past and using that information to suggest similar products in future searches. Additionally, collection search may use data from personas and product rating systems to inform their Shopify search and discovery experience.
For example, a customer may search for 'red dresses' on Princess Polly and initially get general search results. But after shopping for a while for long-sleeve red dresses specifically, their search results become personalized.
» Learn more about a personalized search and recommendation engine
Why Shopify Stores Invest in Search Within a Collection
Smart Shopify owners know that an effective search feature within their collections makes all the difference for success. The right solution can help you:
Improve user experience
If your Shopify store has a lot of collection pages, the navigation can get complex and shoppers may end up struggling to find the right page for product purchase. Search within collections can help them escape the complexity of navigation and get straight to the page and buy products quickly.Tailor your marketing
An effective Shopify collection search tool can gather valuable information about customer searches and interactions with your pages. You can use this data to generate analytics reports that give you insight into the popularity of products, allowing you to tailor your marketing strategy accordingly. Increase your sales
Collection search also shortens people's path to purchase by not requiring them to perform extensive site exploration. This makes shoppers not only more likely to buy, but also spend more. A study found that such shoppers spend 2.6 times more on average than those who were not facilitated by a search function. Strengthen your brand
Robust search solutions for Shopify collections do more than just satisfy the search intent—they use data from search to dynamically present customers with the most relevant items, filters, and categories. Additionally, they help deliver a consistent user experience and look across all your store pages and results, which in turn strengthens your brand image and maximizes trustworthiness.
» Here's how to tackle e-commerce hiccups that bust brand loyalty
Make It Fast
Search within Shopify collections can be a game-changer for your e-commerce business. With the right search solution, you can enhance your customers' experience and improve your product discoverability, thereby improving retention and sales too.
Even though your customers aren't interacting with you face-to-face, they still want to feel that personal touch. This means giving them a personalized shopping experience and making sure they can find the products they're looking for without a fuss.