Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento Commerce, is a leading eCommerce platform that is feature-rich, customisable, and reliable. Current versions come equipped with Elasticsearch to power onsite searches, and while it is relatively fast, ready to go out-of-the-box, and can support synonyms and auto-complete, it does have drawbacks. Elasticsearch requires lengthy indexing and takes up space due to indexing, resulting in extra costs for hosting space.
The new Adobe Commerce Live Search feature is designed to improve the onsite search capabilities of Magento Commerce sites, going beyond capabilities of Elasticsearch while taking up less space. With a smarter and easier onsite search functionality, you can help customers find what they are looking for and Increase Sales. Although most eCommerce websites do support some form of onsite search capabilities, the efficiency of the onsite search engine can vary.
Importance of Onsite Search
An onsite search functionality has become an essential for modern eCommerce websites. It has a major impact on the user experience and the convenience with which customers can find desired products. Onsite search dramatically cuts down the time that customers would otherwise have to spend searching for products. The onsite search is the starting point for anywhere between 30% and 60% of online shoppers, and customers using onsite search are 2-4 times more likely to convert.
However, simply offering a basic onsite search option is not enough. If your onsite search is not able to understand the customer and show suitable results fast enough, the customer is likely to leave your eCommerce website for a competitor. According to studies, 61% of eCommerce sites have weak support for search synonyms that would help customers navigate. Nearly 27% of sites will not show adequate results if just one character is misspelled. Only 49% of eCommerce websites support refined searches with faceted navigation.
There are several ways that a robust onsite search system can help you:
- Increase Conversions: When customers are easily able to find what they are looking for, they are likelier to purchase. Onsite search users typically have a purchasing intent, shortening the sales conversion funnel.
- Create Positive User Experiences: Creating a positive user experience and impression on customers is vital for long-term customer loyalty. An easy-to-use onsite search offers customers convenience, and generates a positive brand image.
- Increase Site Usage: An effective onsite search is a great way to reduce bounce rates and encourage customers to spend more time on your eCommerce site. The more time they spend, customers gain familiarity and are likelier to return again.
- Provide Insights into Customer Preferences: The best way to cater to customer preferences is to learn about them. The onsite search feature gives you direct insights into customer preferences and what customers are interested in. These insights can be leveraged for catalogue refinement and higher sales.
What is Adobe Commerce Live Search?
Adobe Commerce Live Search is a new feature powered by Adobe Sensei AI, designed to enable eCommerce websites to offer better onsite search experiences. Available exclusively for Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) eCommerce websites, it combines Adobe Sensei AI capabilities with commerce data. This results in highly relevant onsite search results while customers are typing, and a simplified backend management. With Live Search, you can enable customers to find desired products faster and also products suitable for customers that they might not even have been looking for.
Adobe Sensei is an artificial intelligence and machine learning tool developed by Adobe that is used with the Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe Document Cloud. It is used to power personalised recommendations for Magento powered eCommerce websites. Adobe Sensei capabilities to offer personalised recommendations are leveraged to provide personalised onsite search results. With AI and machine learning, the Adobe Commerce Live Search becomes smarter with each use, providing customers with an enhanced search and shopping experience. Searches are lightning fast, intuitive relevant, and efficient.
As an API-first headless service, Live Search is easy to deploy with compatible Adobe Commerce websites. It is available as a free extension and can be integrated with current Magento On-Premise and Magento Commerce Cloud versions 2.4. Live Search enables eCommerce businesses to provide customers with an AI-enhanced search experience. Built with Adobe Sensei AI, there is no need to manually filter and setup search criterions or rules. The AI analyses your catalogue and shopper queries to provide suitable results. The Live Search feature can be managed directly from the Adobe Commerce Admin.
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Key Features of Live Search
Robust and reliable, Adobe Commerce Live Search focuses on speed, relevance, and ease of use, making it a major asset for merchants while offering customers optimum performance. Here are some of the top features of Adobe Commerce Live Search:
1. Search as you type
Entice your customers as they time in search words with the Live Search feature of ‘search as you type’. As users type in their query in the search box, Live Search responds with showing suggested products and a thumbnail image of top search results in a popover window. By clicking on the suggested or featured product, users can go directly to the corresponding product page.
At the bottom of the popover display is a ‘View All’ link users can click to view all detailed search results in a fresh page. Based on your preference and variation between product names, you can set the minimum numbers of characters required to showcase popover results. Live search results can be shown for as few as one character. By instantly showing search results when users begin typing, it indicates that shopping on your site is fast, and they have multiple product options to choose from.
2. Customisable Popovers
Popovers are a great way to catch the attention of customers and appeal to them in a visually pleasing manner. With Adobe Commerce Live Search, popovers are configured that appear as soon as users begin typing in the onsite search box. The results change depending upon what the user types, adapting to the latest inputs entered by the users.
The Live Search popover shows general suggestions, and specific suggested products with thumbnail images, and a view all option. In contrast to popups that are often disabled by users, popovers are a part of the webpage itself and cannot be disabled. The popovers can be fully customised, and you can adapt the colours of the popover and footer to suit your overall website style. The number and types of suggestions to be displayed in the popover can also be configured, and the popover can be disabled if desired.
3. Infinite scroll
With Live Search, when users select the ‘View all’ option from the popover of the onsite search bar, they are presented with infinite scrolling. As they scroll down the page, new products will continue to appear without having to navigate through pages of static search results. The current search query will be displayed in the search box and users can change the search query at any point for fresh results.
Infinite scrolling is an immensely useful tool to provide users with a frictionless browsing experience. With new content automatically displaying without having to click to the next page, users are likelier to continue scrolling for a longer period of time. Since there is no natural stopping point, users tend to view a significantly higher number of products with infinite scroll. By increasing the number of products users view, they are likelier to find a suitable product for purchase, and get a good view of your wide catalogue.
4. Intelligent Faceting
Filters and facets in searches are a common part of eCommerce onsite search bars, particularly for online stores with large volumes of products. By applying filters/facets, users can narrow down their search and find suitable products faster. However, manually setting up facets can be a time-consuming and inefficient process. Adobe Sensei Live Search uses AI to automatically select and intelligently display suitable filters for each search query.
The automated intelligent faceting is up-to-date with the catalogue offering and offers relevant filters depending upon the search query. With the intelligent faceting, you save time and effort in manually setting up facets. Furthermore, the smart faceting process identifies the most suitable facets, enabling customers to easily filter their search for accurate results. Intelligent faceting is faster for users and merchants, optimising the search process overall.
5. Merchandising Rules
With the Adobe Commerce Live Search feature, you have full control and flexibility in adapting search results to match business goals. The merchandising rules can be conditional and used to boost products, bury products, and hide products based on specific search queries. The boost products merchandising rule enables you to highlight specific products or product lines in search results to increase visibility and sales of specific products. This is useful in promoting new product lines and in getting rid of older stock.
The merchandising rule for bury products enables you to configure certain products or product lines to show up lower in search results. As a result, less popular products can be lowered in importance, giving a chance for other successful products to be highlighted. If certain products are low in stock or have quality issues, they can be hidden from search queries altogether with the hide products merchandising rule. Customising merchandising rules for search queries is useful in managing inventory and sales.
6. Synonym Management
Search queries are typically configured to show results on specific keyword searches. However, depending upon your niche, there may be several ways to refer to your offered products. Online shoppers might use any number of phrases or synonyms to search for products. To cater to their search intention, the onsite search bar needs to be able to recognise and understand product synonyms. Configuring synonyms expands the reach of search queries while sharpening the focus by incorporating words shoppers may use that differ from catalogue terms.
The Adobe Commerce Live Search feature enables you to define related search terms that users may enter, and the corresponding results that should be displayed. For the Live Search feature, you can define two types of synonyms; one-way synonyms, and two-way synonyms. One-way synonyms are designed to guide users efficiently in one direction, for example, when searching for winter clothes, the options can include jackets, sweaters, boots, and scarves. Two-way synonyms broaden the search results to see more suitable products, for example, searching for necklaces can display lockets, pendants, and chains.
7. Category Browse
Beyond the onsite search bar, the Adobe Commerce Live Search feature also helps in user category browsing. By powering the category browse section with Live Search, users can choose from available filters for easier browsing. Users will no longer be dependent on potentially confusing or complex categorisations, and can focus on browsing products they are interested in. Any desired filters can be configured, such as prices, brands, rankings, and popularity.
An efficient category browsing setup is a great way to encourage users to spend time on your eCommerce website, browse, and purchase. If a user doesn’t have a specific product in mind, they can look through categories and filters for inspiration and might end up purchasing. Optimised category browsing enhances the user experience of customers, and also gives you insights into popular categories. According to the products and categories you want to promote and highlight, you can adapt the category layout.
8. Dedicated Reporting
The Adobe Commerce Live Search feature not only offers users an improved search experience, it also provides you with dedicated reporting on search activities. Based on your preferences, you can view analytics and reports based on impressions, views, clicks and more. The Live Search dedicated reports can be used to monitor performance, understand search trends and further optimise search experience.
Insights into search queries, their variations, results, and how queries change over time can help you in understanding customer behaviour. Frequently searched queries can indicate customer preferences and can be used to expand catalogue offerings. The results of any configured merchandising rules can also be measured for effectiveness. Bounce rates from the onsite search bar can indicate the general user response to the search functionality. Dedicated reporting is an effective tool to track user interests and preferences, and gives you valuable insights that can be used to guide business decisions.
Conclusion
For an eCommerce website, it is important to keep up with new trends and features to stay future-ready and up-to-date with customer expectations. The new Adobe Commerce Live Search future for Magento-based eCommerce websites offers excellent onsite search functionalities. It comes with support for search as you type, customisable popovers, infinite scroll, intelligent faceting, merchandising rules, synonym management, category browsing, and dedicated reporting.
Powerful onsite search functionalities are a sizable advantage to any eCommerce website. They increase conversions by targeting users with an intent to purchase and enabling them to find desired products faster. Onsite searches create a positive user experience, increase site usage and provide valuable insights for merchants. The Adobe Commerce Live Search feature is backed by Adobe Sensei AI, facilitating greater automation with machine learning, and requiring minimal manual efforts.
If you already have a Magento powered eCommerce website, are considering migration to Adobe Commerce, or are planning a new eCommerce website, reach out to us at 18th Digitech. Our team of certified Magento developers can help integrate new desired features into an existing site, migrate to the Adobe platform, and develop a new eCommerce solution. Reach out to us today to discuss your eCommerce needs.
Image Sources:
https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/introducing-live-search-adobe-commerce
https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/live-search/quick-tour.html
