How important are advanced search modules for e-commerce? Imagine for a moment that you own a retail store selling designer clothing. A customer comes in and asks one of your employees for some assistance. The customer wants to take a look at a specific item but your employees don’t recognize the name of the product, so they simply tell the customer that they cannot help them and walk away. This leaves the customer with one of three choices: keep trying to search the store on their own, keep trying to ask the employee for help until they get the name right, or simply go somewhere else.
This is essentially what happens when you offer your online customers basic or bare-bones search functionality. A customer searches for something they want using your website’s search form and gets a search results page. If what they typed in doesn’t exist, is called something slightly different, or is simply a typo, the customer will not get any results. Most basic e-commerce setups will return that dreaded “no results found” page if the search string a user enters doesn’t match exactly what’s in your database. We know that online shoppers today are as impatient as ever and not showing them what they want quickly will just lead to a quick exit.
That’s where advanced search extensions come in. These extensions improve the search functionality of your online store, making it smarter and more efficient.
How to Choose the Right Advanced Search Modules for E-commerce
There are 3 general categories for e-commerce search modules that we can use to help users better understand online store searches.
Vanilla search functionality included with your e-commerce platform
We borrowed the above image from Nextopia because it perfectly encapsulates what a basic search module that comes included with most e-commerce platforms does compare to their advanced counterparts.
The obvious advantage is that this is free! Every e-commerce setup comes with abasic search feature out of the box which is better than not being able to search at all. This is, of course, a very limited feature simply because the results can often times come out inaccurate or will just show nothing at all to the users because they have not typed in exactly which product they are looking for. So it’s not perfect but at least it works. Unfortunately, leaving basic search on your online store is doing the bare minimum and will ultimately lose you precious conversions.
Third-party advanced search modules for e-commerce
Third-party advanced search modules for e-commerceadvanced search modules for e-commerce come in the form of extensions or plugins, depending on what e-commerce platform you are running. These advanced search modules are generally developed individually for one or several e-commerce platforms. In the case of Magento and Magento 2, Mageworx offers a module specifically for both versions of the platform which take full advantage of the versatility of Magento to add in some great search functionality.
Generally, like with Mageworx, third-party search modules have a one-time installation and license fee. The module is installed on your host server which also houses your e-commerce platform and is then integrated into the platform. The performance and speed of these modules will depend heavily on your host server as well as how it was integrated into your store code and what other plugins or extensions you are running. So unless the module developer has an easy way to install one of these, you would definitely need to consider having a professional developer handle the setup.
Cloud-based advanced search modules
The latest and possibly the best option for implementing advanced search in your online store is by using a cloud-based search module like SLI, Nextopia or Doofinder. These modules offer all the functionality and benefits of the third-party modules, if not more.
The first important distinction between these and third-party modules is the pricing structure. Cloud-based modules will generally have a lower cost associated with the setup and will usually bill monthly as a subscription service. This allows companies to avoid that big initial money sink or lowers their overall upfront costs on e-commerce development when launching a store.
The other difference is the speed and performance. Because services like SLI, Nextopia and Doofinder are hosted on cloud servers, they do not get bogged down by the rest of your store, resulting in lightning-fast searches. We talk about the importance of load speed, and using one of these cloud-based modules would certainly help speed up your store and increase conversion.
The benefits of advanced search modules in e-commerce
There are several universal improvements that all the best and most popular advanced search extensions will introduce to your online store. While different modules may implement and present these differently, the basic idea should remain about the same across the board.
Advanced Search Modules for E-commerce and Auto-Suggest
The biggest addition that advanced search modules for e-commerce search extensions bring is the ability to display live auto-suggestions to a customer as they are filling out the form. So as they start typing, the form starts generating results right there as a drop-down in the search field. You can see this already in action on the Trademark Hardware website we upgraded recently. As the user keeps typing, the search results adapt and get more and more detailed. Finally, once they are done typing and pressing search, the results pop up either the exact match to what is searched or whatever matches the search terms the best. Even in case of typos, the advanced search algorithms will try to figure out what the user actually wants and give them those results.
Advanced search modules for e-commerce Suggested results and similar matches
The fun doesn’t stop at just the suggested results. One of the best ways to retain customers and turn shoppers into buyers is by giving them a reason to keep shopping and keep buying. As the user searches, they will receive suggestions for other products. This is especially useful in avoiding the “no results found” page we mentioned earlier. When whatever the user searches for doesn’t exist, this will at least present them with some alternatives. At the very least, they will get a page that shows some “did you mean…” results that display the most popular products and most searched items within the store.
Even after certain items have been put into a shopping cart, the advanced search modules for e-commerce search extension will suggest popular products that generally get purchased together with whatever the user is currently about to check out.
If you have any questions about advanced search modules for e-commerce, feel free to email us and we will do our best to help you out. Thanks for reading!
About FinestShops
Whether you need to upgrade your current online store or want to create a new one, Finestshops has you covered! Sign up for our Managed E-commerce Service and create your new online store risk-free with no commitment. If you already have an online store, request a free performance test for an in-depth analysis of its’ strengths and weaknesses.
If you are interested in upgrading or migrating to Magento 2, ask us about our Magento 2 Upgrade Package. This package is tailored towards businesses without an in-house IT department to provide a complete and feature-rich e-commerce experience. It includes the deployment of Magento 2, a modern look, a number of essential extensions, 24/7 support and top of the line cloud-based hosting.
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