The search is one of the most important elements of any online store, since in most cases it defines whether a potential customer remains on your site or, after not finding the right product, leaves it without even looking through what your store offers.
The search should work fast, show the results in the most convenient way and tend to a full-scale search, so that even with the fuzzy key query, the user can see the results displayed and get interested in the products of the store.
The standard WooCommerce Search
The standard WooCommerce search allows you to search only after entering the full words in the search box. Then it displays the search results on a separate page.
In addition, it’s worth mentioning that a product can be found only by the product name, which is quite enough for the efficient store navigation. There’s also great news that by default the store search copes with different word order patterns. For example, if you’re looking for “Long Sleeve Tee” and you enter “Tee Sleeve Long”, the store search will come up with the regular word order pattern, “Long Sleeve Tee”.
The standard search does not support the Live Search option, i.e. it does not show search results as you type in the search box.
The absence of this feature somewhat hinders search quality, as we’re so used to search usability offered by Google or Amazon.
There are no additional search settings in the standard WooCommerce search. All additional interface settings can only be done in the theme code.
Advanced Woo Search
This is one of the most popular plugins aimed at product search improvement in WooCommerce.
There is a free and a paid edition of this plugin available. The plugin provides the Live Search option and has a number of settings to configure.
The plugin includes its own search index for products therefore it’s important to reassign product search index in the admin settings before the work starts. Plus, there’s also its own widget (different from the standard WooCommerce’s), so it’s important not to forget to replace it.
The free version features
The free plugin version is quite sufficient for the extended search settings and accurate search performance.
- An option to search by the product name
- An option to search by the variation name, category or short description
- An option to specify words to be ignored when searching
- Determining whether to show out-of-stock products in the search
- Showing the price in the autocomplete
- Showing the discount icon in the autocomplete
- A separate search widget
The premium version features
The premium version offers some additional interface customization options together with some functional features. Please check the following list.
- Showing a short description in the autocomplete
- Showing the rating in the autocomplete
- Showing the category in the autocomplete
- Selecting the category to search in, the search part (filter)
- Search results filtering option is very important in case there are too many search result items.
You can download the free version on the WordPress repository.
YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search
This plugin is the most popular among all mentioned above as the number of its active downloads in the WordPress directory exceeds 100K.
There is a free and a paid edition of this plugin available.
For the accurate plugin performance it’s important to replace the WooCommerce’s standard search widget for the new one, although it doesn’t need any additional reindexation and starts operating right after its installation.
The free version features
The free version is very limited, although it offers the Live Search option.
- An option to search by the product name
- Highlighting the words the product was found for
- A separate search widget
The premium version features
The premium version contains a range of settings for customization. Mostly customizations refer to the live search widget interface. The search itself and the search results page is displayed with the help of WooCommerce. The search results filtering option is not available.
- An option to search by the variation name, category or short description
- Different settings for the autocomplete display: showing images, short description, price, rating, and category in the autocomplete
- Selecting the category to search in, the search part (filter)
- Showing the “Out of stock” icon
You can download the free version on the WordPress repository.
Premmerce Search
This is a new plugin that is not as popular the ones mentioned earlier, although it suggests some interesting features that have not been presented yet in the existing solutions.
This plugin is available only as a free version. It supports the Live Search functionality and automatically displays the search results as the user types.
The plugin uses the WooCommerce’s standard widget, therefore no additional settings required. Moreover, it conducts its own product indexation for a quick search so all you need is to click the indexation button in the search settings.
The features of the plugin
The main feature of this plugin is its search algorithm. It is looking for the products even if there is a mistake in the user’s search query.
- Searching despite a mistake (a typo) in the search query
- Search for the similar words
- Search for the words with the same pronunciation
- Search for the transliterated words
- Displaying the filter by the search results with the help of the Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter plugin
- Expanding the capabilities of the Product Search WooCommerce widget.
You can find additional description and download plugin here.
Conclusions
Basically, there are three plugins that can greatly expand the basic WooCommerce search functionality. Each plugin conducts search with the help of Live Search in the free version and offers some additional features in the paid one.
We highly recommend that you use an additional search plugin as it will definitely increase your online store conversion.
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Thanks, hope this will help the blog readers alot.