If you are a Los Angeles business owner running an eCommerce website, you understand the importance of a customer being able to quickly, easily, and accurately find a product. Even more so when you are running digital marketing campaigns to attract new website visitors. If a customer is looking for a specific item and cannot find it with 1-2 clicks, they are going to use your search. If your Magento website search is slow or returning irrelevant results, your prospective customer will move onto the next website and the money you just spent acquiring them resulted in a bounce.
Default Magento Search Functionality is Insufficient
Magento’s website search functionality is not a strong point of the platform. It really does not compare with the business intelligence features of competing enterprise level eCommerce platforms. More often than not, due to poor implementation, customers are unable to find a product or service even when it’s listed in your product catalog. Default search functionality just does not have intelligent enough algorithms and items that would otherwise be an expected match are not shown in the search results set.
One solution to this problem is utilizing one of the many available extensions for enhancing website search. An enhanced website search can be faster, more accurate, and have added features like providing suggestions when the customers search may not find an immediate match. Even common occurrences like plural searches and spelling errors will be corrected.
Ordering of Magento Website Search Results
An effective site search will order the results of your website search results more accurately. Irrelevant products mixed in with your results will translate into users aborting their search and likely exiting your website. Accurate results will increase your website conversion percentages. Showing products based on popularity and conversions will be far more beneficial that the default alphabetical ordering.
Features Available in Most Search Extensions
- Stop Words
- Synonyms
- Search by Category and Tags
- Correction of Typo’s
- Singular/Plural Search
- Showing “out of stock” products Last
- Uses AJAX
- Drop-down Box with Product Image and Price
- Fast Indexing
Some Magento Website Search Enhancement Extensions
- Sphinx Search Ultimate (https://mirasvit.com/magento-extensions/sphinx-search-ultimate.html): Sphinx Search Ultimate is a Magento extension that combines the most modern approaches to the product search for online stores. Here you’ll find all you need in order to create an ideal product search in your online store.
- Search Pro (https://amasty.com/search-pro.html): Your customers will be happy with this advanced Magento instant search solution with extremely high relevance. Let people quickly find exactly what they are looking for.
- Smartest Instant Search (https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/search-smartest-instant-search.html): Intelligent cloud hosted site search with self-learning search technology. Guaranteed to increase in search led conversions.
- Search Autocomplete and Suggest by aheadWorks (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/search-autocomplete-and-suggest-by-aheadworks.html): Improve your online store’s usability to attract new customers and increase your sales.
- Magento Ajax Search And Autocomplete extension (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/magento-ajax-search-and-autocomplete-extension.html): Magento Ajax Search And Autocomplete extension will help your visitors to find what they are looking for in easy and fast way. Ajax Search extension improves Magento default search with great Ajax autocomplete feature. Store visitors will see suggested products right after they will type first several letters in search.
If these Magento search enhancement extensions don’t offer all the features you are looking for, hire a professional Magento extension developer to create a custom solution for your business.
The research for this article was done by a staff writer for LDA Interactive, a Los Angeles based web design agency. Contact LDA at info@ldainteractive.com or call (213) 342-1770 for a website consultation from one of our specialists.