Search in my opinion is one of the most important feature for e-commerce. We spend hundreds of dollars in paid ads to get customers to our store and then we miss out on sales because they searched for something and didn’t get it (while we do have those products). Good search could automatically increase sales by at least 30%.
Ever since I’ve started using CS-Cart, I’ve been surprised at how basic and mediocre the built in search functionality is. We bought the Cart-Power search add-on but even this is not enough and fails at several simple use cases. Yes, I make use of other built in features like search words but we cannot rely on that as search terms may vary.
CS-Cart keeps referring to searchanise and other third party site search engines but I don’t want to be paying just for search every month. Especially since there can be really high volume of searches and have over 30k products.
I have a capable server with enough computing power, why should I pay separately just for search?
CS-Cart should have it’s own well built search engine by either making use of a separate no-code DB like Redis, ElasticSearch especially for search and full integration with all cs-cart features. This will also be a really good selling point for CS-Cart and make it stand out from other e-commerce platforms. I doubt this will be taken seriously by cs-cart so in the mean time how can I achieve search functionality like in Amazon for my store?
Here are some features which are missing:
Auto-Suggestions: A search bar that provides auto-suggestions as the user types, helping them find products faster.
Error Correction: The search should be able to interpret misspellings and provide relevant results.
Faceted Search: The ability to filter search results by various attributes (e.g., size, color, price range) to help users narrow down their options.
Synonym Recognition: The search engine should recognize synonyms and related terms to ensure that relevant products are shown even if the user doesn’t use the exact keyword.
Responsive: The search function should work seamlessly across different devices and screen sizes.
Speed and Performance: The search engine should deliver results quickly, without significant delay.
Personalization: The ability to personalize search results based on user behavior and preferences and history
Search Analytics: Providing insights into user search behavior can help in understanding customer preferences and trends.
Sorting/ranking: ability to set weighting for how search results should be sorted, sorted with relevance
Integration with Product Catalog: integrate well with the website’s product catalog to ensure accurate and up-to-date results.