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May 12, 2023 | 9 minute read
written by Kelsey Zapana
Last year, retail eCommerce sales exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in history. Clearly, consumers expect to find goods and services online. For your brand, meeting that consumer expectation means having a strong eCommerce search engine.
Leading eCommerce search engines help your customers find exactly what they’re looking for with minimal effort, and give you insights into what your buyers are searching for.
Site search is a powerful capability because a strong eCommerce search engine will fuel positive customer experiences. Positive customer experiences mean more business and repeat customers, and that means more revenue. Learn more about eCommerce search solutions and the best eCommerce search engines on the market.
An eCommerce search engine is a specialized search engine that helps customers find products on your digital storefront.
A strong eCommerce product search engine is able to interpret the search queries of your customers. If a customer types “dress” into your digital storefront’s site search box, your eCommerce search engine should give them products that fit that description.
Note that an eCommerce search engine is different from a general search engine, such as Google. Google crawls the web to give information related to a search query. An eCommerce search engine exists specifically for and on your site and directs customers exclusively to products that you sell.
Having a strong search engine included in your digital commerce experience comes with benefits that improve your customers’ experiences and your brand’s business.
The benefits of an eCommerce search engine include:
In all, a strong eCommerce search engine helps you offer customers relevant products and improves the likelihood that they’ll purchase.
As you evaluate eCommerce site search solutions, some functionalities are a must.
Scalability
Your eCommerce solution must be able to weather the up-and-down nature of an online marketplace. At times, overall traffic will surge. At other times, searches for specific items will increase. For example, if you sell home maintenance equipment, people are much more likely to search your site for snowblowers in November than April. The eCommerce search engine you use must manage the highs of traffic and data without crashing your site or giving your IT department fits.Faceted navigation and filters eCommerce search engines exist to move your customers closer to purchase, which means giving them the ability to search for products that have their exact specifications.
To find the right product, customers want faceted navigation and filters. An effective eCommerce search engine will have visual cues that help customers narrow down to desired categories such as price, size, color, and more.Natural language processing (NLP)When customers type a query into your search site tool, they aren’t likely to put in the full, technical name of a product. Instead, they may search for “nike running shoe” or “red polka dot dress.”
Natural language processing (NLP) is able to recognize a brand name or product specification and display products that match customers’ desires. NLP is integral to an eCommerce search solution because if a customer types “nike” into your search bar, they don’t want to see Reebok. If they search for “red shirt,” they don’t want to see green pants. If your customers’ language can’t be processed to produce appropriate product recommendations, they’re more likely to toggle to a third-party search tool that could route them to one of your competitors.No Zero ResultsThe last thing you want is for consumers to search your website and your search engine provider to display to them absolutely nothing. Being given zero results causes consumers to bounce to a different website. A strong eCommerce search engine should show consumers relevant results for any search, not a blank page with nary a product.Artificial intelligenceAI is significant to the present and future of eCommerce search engines. AI is especially important to providing highly personalized services and giving customers a fast, friction-free experience. Make sure your eCommerce site search solution has strong AI capabilities.
Just like any partner in your eCommerce solution, a site search vendor needs to align with your business needs and goals and integrate well with your existing system.
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Deciding on an eCommerce search solution isn’t easy. Learn about 12 eCommerce search engines that can help move your customers closer to purchase.
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Website: algolia.com
Overview: Algolia’s search as a service model indexes clients' sites to make for a simpler search task. The benefits include easy implementation and the ability to make changes quickly as needed. Algolia is known for their expertise in advanced search functionality, which is especially useful for catalog management.Algolia’s instant-on integration is available with Elastic Path’s Integrations Hub. Watch this demo to see how Algolia can be quickly and simply integrated into your digital commerce solution.
Headquarters: Helsinki, Finland
Website: addsearch.com
Overview: AddSearch is known for a flexible, easily integrated product. Small business owners in particular turn to AddSearch because of its moderate cost and strong customer service.
Headquarters: London, United Kingdom
Website: advancedcommerce.io
Overview: Advanced Commerce’s GrapheneHC eCommerce platform includes a strong product search tool. GrapheneHC helps brands answer any search query and provide relevant results through intent recognition. GrapheneHC avoids null search results through predictive text, a synonym library, redirects, and a strong reporting tool.
Website: azure.microsoft.com
Overview: Azure Cognitive Search is the only cloud search service with built-in AI capabilities that enrich all types of information to easily identify and explore relevant content at scale.Azure Cognitive Search provides an indexing and query engine and stores search indexes that brands create and manage. Azure Cognitive Search also has a query language for composing simple to complex queries.
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
Website: bloomreach.com
Overview: With applications for content management, site search, page management, SEO optimization, and role-based analytics, Bloomreach is a central location where everyone who manages customer experience can come together to drive positive business outcomes.
Website: constructor.io
Overview: Constructor.io prides itself on helping brands optimize site search for more than just relevance, instead viewing its eCommerce search engine as a product discovery tool optimized for business results. Constructor.io allows brands to personalize their entire product discovery experience with autofills and recommendations that target specific users’ shopping habits. Compared to other tools, Constructor.io gives brands strong control over exactly what shoppers see when they type in a given query.
Headquarters: Quebec, Canada
Website: coveo.com
Overview: Coveo provides search optimization for eCommerce applications, websites, and workplace enablement. Coveo’s solutions plug into any system, regardless of tech stack. You can start from scratch or use their pre-built integrations. Coveo’s users tend to be pleased with its analytics capabilities.
Website: cloud.google.com
Overview: Google is a well-known market leader in search. Google Cloud Search builds on the powerful searching capabilities of Google and gives the customers of brands like yours to search websites and product catalogs. Google Cloud Search helps get customers to products by offering relevant search suggestions.
Website: perficient.com
Overview: Handshake is a modern Search Connector Framework that takes the guesswork out of getting content to index. Handshake manages connections, content, metadata, and permissions on a schedule. Handshake also provides a user interface that helps business users create connection pipelines.
Website: lucidworks.com
Overview: Founded in 2008, LucidWorks initially provided support and consulting services for the Apache Lucene/Solr open-source search project. Currently, LucidWorks is the largest supporter of open-source search industry-wide. LucidWorks offers search, discovery, and analytics solutions from two platform products.
Headquarters: New York, NY
Website: sinequa.com
Overview: Sinequa’s search optimization expertise applies to large organizations with complex information layers such as government agencies. Sinequa scores well in the marketplace for a smooth integration process.
Website: yext.com
Overview: Yext offers customized search and discovery experiences based on natural language processing and AI. Yext’s real-time search analytics provides additional insights into what users are searching for, and the questions they’re asking. Yext is known for strong, multi-format support capabilities.
Having a strong eCommerce search engine is essential to digital commerce success. Options abound, so evaluate your brand’s digital maturity and commerce goals before selecting an eCommerce search engine.Also remember that a robust, intuitive site search functionality is only part of what’s required to deliver customers an extraordinary shopping experience.Whether you’re choosing an eCommerce search engine or adding other digital commerce architecture, a Composable Commerce solution doesn’t have to break the bank. Check out Integrations Hub from Elastic Path for a library of no-code, instant-on integrations that reduce the time and cost of implementations so you can get live faster and vastly reduce your TCO.
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