Are your ecommerce sales stagnant? Do you have awesome products, but low conversions? It may be time to take a look at search navigation.
The reason for focusing on search navigation on your eCommerce website is simple : many customers prefer searching over using navigation menus or filtering. A good search is quick, making the shopping experience easier and less frustrating for customers. Search allows customers to find exactly what they want without any fuss.
Search doesn’t just improve user experience, it also helps increase conversions and reduce abandoned cart rates. Users who search tend to have more purchase intent, making it more likely they will purchase the product if they can find it quickly.
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With the right search service, businesses can also learn more about what customers want by what they’re searching, information that can inform future business decisions.
According to BuiltWith, Magento is powering 8% of the top 10,000 online stores. While Magento is a great platform to create a multi-functional and sleek store, the default search feature isn’t always best for stores, especially those with many products.
The search function is prominent on Amazon
The default Magento search comes with a few ways of modifying search results, such as specifying whether to search for “like” terms or “full-text” terms, or a combination of the two. That’s about the extent of the out-of-the-box Magento search function.
For this reason, many ecommerce businesses choose to integrate search services through extensions. These search services often include several search features that come in handy:
- Relevance – results are relevant to search term
- Autocomplete – gives relevant suggestions while user types
- Misspellings – tolerates misspellings and will show results with corrected spelling
- Synonyms – includes results for similar terms, for example, searching for “earbuds” also brings up “earphones”
- Speed – search can quickly gather results
All of these search characteristics can greatly increase the chance a customer finds what they’re looking for and completes a purchase. What’s not to love about that?
We’ve compiled a list of 4 Magento search extensions that include many, if not all, of these features. All extensions listed are currently compatible with Magento 1 versions. At the end of this article, you’ll find a handy comparison table to help make a decision about which search service to use.
Magento Search Extensions
Doofinder Site Search
Doofinder uses Artificial Intelligence to learn from customers and improve eCommerce’s search experience. Thanks to features like autocomplete and faceted search among others, users can find what they’re looking for faster and therefore it increases sales.
It also provides advanced statistics to understand how customers behave inside a store. Doofinder works natively with every eCommerce platform and can be installed in less than 5 minutes, no coding required.
Price: From 29$ (30 day free trial)
InstantSearch+
This extension boasts lightning-fast search speed, high relevancy, and multiple result sorting options. Store visitors will love the autocomplete and “did you mean?” functions. The search results page is also responsive and this extension includes analytics to understand customer search behavior.
This search service is only free up to 250 products. After that, users can purchase affordable subscriptions for larger stores.
Price: Free for <250 products
Search Autocomplete & Suggest
The Search Autocomplete & Suggest extension delivers relevant search results after a few characters are typed. Results are shown as a dropdown list, so customers don’t have to navigate to a separate results page.
Potential customers can search by product attribute, suggested search terms, and tags. There are many ways businesses can customize the extension to adjust the search functionality. They can even exclude out of stock products from search results.
Price: $99
Ultimate Sphinx Search
This search extension uses the Sphinx search service to create a search experience that is highly accurate, relevant, and finds results from the first letter. Potential customers can search product categories, tags, SKUs, and more.
This extension creates a dropdown box of search results with product names and images. If there are no search results, Ultimate Sphinx Search offers suggestions. This extension uses Ajax to quicken the search process.
Price: $149
The Take Away
This list isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of every Magento search extension available. It includes 4 of the most popular search extensions with robust capabilities. Many include similar features like autocomplete, misspelling tolerance, synonyms, and speed. Beyond price differences, how is it possible to pick the best search extension?
One feature that sets some of the search extensions apart is the search analytics. This has the potential to give a lot of useful information about what customers are looking for, what are the top searches, and terms customers are looking for with no results. When looking for a Magento search extension, don’t underestimate the usefulness of this information.
Choose one of these search extensions to replace the default Magento search and wish your customers happy searching! Oh, and watch for an increase in conversions. You’re welcome!
