Simple site-wide search boxes are a common feature of many websites and allow your visitors to narrow down their search range or find very specific items quickly and easily, IF set up correctly.
There are a wide range of search plugins available for WordPress and WooCommerce. They have various pros and cons so the question should really be, “What is the best site search for my website?”.
Realnet has experience of many search plugins and it’s our job to suggest the best one based on the website in question (and how the content is structured, types of pages to be searched etc.).
Some things to consider are:
- What should the search be used for? For instance, if your primary website goal is product sales, then limiting results to products may be sensible.
- What factors will your visitors use to search? Knowing what these should be, allows you to set what content is interrogated in a search or what priority is given to certain types of content, for example;
- In some industries, a model number might be more useful than a name.
- In others, the brand or certain specification factors or sizes might be very important.
- For a B2C website, where people might be browsing through products with a less specific idea of what they want, it might be useful to be able to direct them to a broader category or a range.
- The search system should have some tolerance for misspellings, especially if search terms are long or complex.
- Fast, real-time listing of search results is now an expectation rather than a bonus and everything should be done to ensure your visitors have the most responsive experience.
- Displaying images per item, even if very simple ones, help to distinguish lists of search results and makes selection of items easier for your visitor.
If you want to find out more about how Realnet could help you with your ecommerce website, get in touch!