With so much content flooding the internet, it can be quite difficult for users to find what they are looking for. This is also true for eCommerce sites that offer users with thousands of products. To boost user retention and increase purchase rates, a lot of eCommerce sites include search features. After all, it helps make the website more user-friendly and significantly contributes to customer satisfaction. But, how do you implement it and what are the challenges? Well, to help break it down, we have curated this article that deals with Algolia search for eCommerce.
So, what are you waiting for? Jump right into it and learn more about Algolia search that you can implement to help boost your website’s user retention rates. We will also discuss some of its main benefits that both you and your website visitors will undoubtedly enjoy as soon as the Algolia search engine is implemented on your eCommerce website.
Why Is A Robust eCommerce Search Engine Important?
Before we jump right into the implementation of Algolia Search in eCommerce sites, let us discuss the importance of a robust eCommerce search engine. This will help you understand why more and more businesses are looking for professional Magento development services.
It is highly possible that your website might be stuck with low conversion rates and purchases due to the lack of on-site search features. After all, no one likes to scroll through hundreds of products to find what they’ve been looking for. And, when visitors cannot find the products and services they would like to purchase, they will not go through with the transaction. This is why most businesses consider implementing Algolia search in their eCommerce and online stores.
Research suggests that approximately 30% of website visitors use search features to find products and are more likely to complete the purchase. However, simply implementing search features would not help. Adding search suggestions and autocomplete can help as data suggests 25% of website users click on them. Another important data – the average conversion rate of eCommerce sites is 2.77%, but when site search is added, the conversion rate is improved to 4.63%.
So, it is quite clear that adding search features and functionalities can bring in a lot of benefits and improve the conversion rate. However, you must ensure that an effective advanced search in Magento 2 or other website platforms is implemented. Otherwise, it can have a negative impact on the ultimate user satisfaction and drive them away.
Algolia Search For eCommerce For Curating Great User Experiences
You might be thinking that you would need to hire expert developers to implement search features and functionalities in your website. However, this is not true simply because of the introduction of eCommerce engines like Magento and WordPress. You can also implement these functionalities with out-of-the-box eCommerce solutions that are flooding the market.
A great example is Agolia search for eCommerce which is a powerful search engine that allows businesses to add robust search features and functionalities to their websites. The best part of Algolia implementation is that it offers a high level of customization and offers full-text and personalized searches. Moreover, Algolia search in eCommerce sites also delivers accurate results within 100ms all over the globe.
Main Features Of Algolia Search For eCommerce
Now, Algolia is a robust system with a wide array of features that makes it one of the best tools that developers can utilize for eCommerce design and development. The best part is that these features do not require any development which ultimately helps reduce the development time and overall investment in the long run. Some of these notable features that you must keep in mind include:
1. Supports Multiple Languages
Since Algolia is an eCommerce tool that supports a global audience, it supports both left-to-right and right-to-left scripts for ease of development. This means that you can easily add multiple languages to your eCommerce website without having to code anything.
2. Can Tolerate Typos
A canonical feature that must be implemented by most search engineers is typo tolerance because customers will be disappointed if your website fails to show relevant products due to misspelled words. The best part of Algolia’s typo tolerance is that it is customizable and allows businesses to define how tolerant it should be.
3. Highlights Results
With Algolia’s automatic result highlight, it is easier for users to find the most relevant result. This works even if the query is misspelled which helps boost user retention.
4. Facets
With facets, users can easily refine search results and easily find what they are looking for.
5. Allows Use Of Synonyms
Algolia allows businesses to set synonym pairs that help users refine the data based on their needs and get access to relevant search results.
6. Language Processing Settings
With Algolia, businesses can dive deeper into language grammar settings such as handling plurals, optional words, prefixes, and more.
7. Results Based On Geo-Location
A lot of businesses want their eCommerce site to boost their offline presence and with geo-awareness, users can easily find products that are available at a location near them. This ultimately helps boost user conversion and allows businesses to build better customer relations.
8. Sorting Strategies
To allow users to better fine-tune results, Algolia allows businesses to add multiple sorting strategies like price and availability.
Benefits Of Algolia Search For eCommerce
To help you better understand why many businesses prefer implementing Algolia search in Magento 2 and other CMS platforms, we have listed its prime benefits in the following section. After all, Agolia is quite robust and provides users with out-of-the-box functions and features making design and development of eCommerce sites quite easy. Another advantage is that these can be easily configured and integrated into existing systems. Since these do not require any coding, they reduce the overall development time.
Some other key benefits of Algolia’s search for eCommerce sites include:-
1. Reduced Difficulty In The Overall User Search Experience
With the help of Algolia search for eCommerce, websites can offer custom internal searches that are more streamlined and efficient. Most websites and applications today are filled with content and information that are available in numerous varying formats. This is where Algolia search is quite effective and allows users to find what they have been looking for.
2. Offers Better And Relevant Answers To Queries
The common mistake that eCommerce sites make is overburdening users with vague or off-target search results. These have no contribution to user satisfaction and can have a negative impact. Generally, this is a result of implementing the Magento 2 search extension with Algolia search without considering the different user profiles. With a custom Algolia search for eCommerce, you can easily eliminate customer pain points and provide relevant results to users.
3. Improved User Experience For Site Visitors
A lot of businesses implement Magento 2 search autocomplete and similar tools, but what they don’t realize is that user retention is also hurt by a long list of unprioritized search results. With Agolia search, businesses can implement custom search that highlights results to users and ensures complicated searches are broken down.
Benefits In Terms Of Business Profits
We have discussed the benefits of Algolia search from the POV of users, but you must also know how it benefits your business. To help you better understand why you must enquire about the estimated cost to build Magento eCommerce store and implementing an Algolia search, we have listed the top benefits below:-
1. Better Discovery Of Customer Intent
A great business challenge is the lack of visibility and transparency about what customers are looking for. When you implement a custom internal site search function, your company has direct access to customer intent. Every search generates actionable data that you can utilize to better customize deals offered and run marketing campaigns.
2. Improved Discoverability Of Available Content
As your business scales with time, your website also grows and keeps adding more content. Sometimes, it is easier for users to find web pages, products, and information via the on-site search functionality instead of the website navigation. So, with custom site search, every web page and content piece available on your website is accessible to users and can be found.
Common Challenges Your Business Might Face In Implementing Algolia Search
Implementing an Algolia search can bring great business benefits, but you must also consider that your development team might face some common challenges. Remember that a lot of businesses are migrating to Magento 2 to make the implementation a bit easier. To help you prepare for these beforehand and ensure better customer satisfaction, we have listed some of these problems below:-
1. Challenges In Implementation
It is undoubtedly difficult to maintain multiple search tools within your website and with Algolia your team is in charge of maintaining only one tool. However, the issue is that implementing the Algolia search can be a bit complicated. It will require an initial investment of time and resources but will relieve your company of any further investment in the long run.
2. Inconsistent Data Sources
Algolia search can be implemented to a wide range of data sources but if these vary too much in terms of structure and range, your database and index scheme will too. So, this will mean that your development team will have to fine-tune all relevant configurations according to the data source to ensure that it is working properly. We recommend you hire Magento developers with years of experience to ensure that all data sources are properly handled.
3. Data Duplication Issues
When running the same search across multiple data sources, your data is at risk of duplication. An easy way to eliminate this challenge is by implementing deduplication which refers to the process of identification and elimination of the redundant data present in the website.
Conclusion
On-site search can bring great results to your eCommerce site and with Algolia, you do not need to worry about its development and implementation. We hope the above article helped break down the different benefits, challenges, and solutions available to you.
Looking for professional help to implement Algolia search for eCommerce on your website? Get in touch with a professional eCommerce website development company to hire eCommerce developers or other CMS developers and get it done today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Algolia search is a great tool that lets businesses include on-site search on their website. To learn about the benefits it brings to businesses and user retention, we recommend checking out the above article.
Algolia Search can be easily integrated with multiple eCommerce platforms including Shopify and Magento.
Algolia search is a highly efficient search tool that works for small businesses as well as large eCommerce stores. The main focus of the tool is to offer users on-site search features and functionalities to help boost user retention and site reputation.
Some key features of Algolia’s search for eCommerce that have led to its popularity include – multi-language support, high tolerance to typos, synonyms, highlighting and snippets, and facets.
Optimizing search results using Algolia can be difficult as the tool does require an investment of time and resources for proper implementation. This is why a lot of businesses hire professional and experienced developers to successfully implement Algolia search on their websites.
