Article Number: 630 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 11:32 AM
Summary:
This article will provide some suggestions for improving search results returned to customers in your NRO storefront.
Solution:
It's important to understand that ecommerce solutions at the same price point as NRO do not afford built in adaptive algorithm searching. But, NRO has some great features built into its core that prove sufficient for most merchants. As with any extension of your business, there is some effort that you should expect to expend to get your data optimized in a way that improves usability and optimizes your content for search engines.
NCR Retail Online is powered by an open source ecommerce solution called Magento Community. Out of box, Magento Community provides great tools, as well as configurable settings that allow you to tweak your store's search results to guide your customer towards more relevant products.
The search type settings are under System > Configuration > Catalog Section > Catalog tab > Catalog Search panel.
How The Like Search Option Works
The ‘like’ method is based on a database query method that states "Find me results that are similar to this keyword”. So if you are selling notebooks and notepads, and somebody on your website types the word ‘note’, the ‘like’ search setting will allow that user to view all options where the product name has the word ‘note’ in it. It is considered a more ‘loose’ approach to searching because you are not forcing the user to only view results that are a 100% perfect match with your keyword.
This type of option can have performance issues and is not based on ‘relevance’ at all so it is not the most accurate method of searching. Its primary benefit is the ability to find products if a customer accidentally mistypes a product name. This is why many people prefer the ‘fulltext’ method.
How The Fulltext Search Option Works
If you select ‘fulltext’ as the ‘search method’ for your store’s search engine, you will be providing your visitors with a search that bases results on relevance. It will *not* find partial matches, so if you type note in the search box, you are not going to see ‘notebook’ products listed.
Behind the scenes, this search type calculates which products are the best match for your search. If you have a few products with the keyword in the title or ecommerce description (you might want to exclude this attribute), it will be able to weigh which listings are worth showing first. The advantage to this method is you are providing a higher quality listing of products based on their search. The potential disadvantage is that if they make a mistake on typing the keyword, they will not find the product they intended to find. This is why the third option, titled ‘combine’, may be appealing to some people. That stated, good housekeeping includes monitoring your customer's search phrases and setting up targeted search results, as well as synonyms for misspelled words.
How The Combine Search Option Works
The ‘combine’ method uses the power of both ‘like’ and ‘fulltext’ searches. When it comes to matching product titles with the keyword, just like a ‘like’ query, it will allow for partial words to be matched such as ‘note’, as a search word, pulling up listings for ‘notepad’ – something a ‘fulltext’ search will not do.
As for generating results, the ‘combine’ method, while it is flexible when it comes to finding products with a partial match of the keyword, it uses the flexibility and power of the ‘fulltext’ search in order to sort results by relevancy. Therefore, as it is described in its title, it is combining the benefits of ‘like’ and ‘fulltext’ searching.
**TIP:
Another way to improve search results is to turn off attribute searching for attributes that contain words that wouldn't necessarily contribute positively to the search results, such as the item's HTML Description attribute. This is done by going to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes. Search for the attribute code, description. On the properties tab, open the Frontend Properties and set the Use in Quick Search, Use in Advanced Search and Comparable on Front-end to No.
The item name is used in search results. For advanced searching, as well as making your content search engine optimized you'll want your item name to be keyword rich. Here's a KB article about creating ecommerce friendly item names and descriptions for your items:
As suggested earlier,
Magento has a nice built in feature that allows you to create targeted search results off of keywords that your customer enters in the search box. Here is a KB article that details how to set those up:
In addition to the built in features, there are third party services that can be integrated with NRO.
We’ve implemented the following search services to date with NRO:
1) Nextopia (our recommended solution)
2) SLI Systems
3) Celebros
4) Searchspring
All of these solutions have their benefits. We encourage you to research these options, before making a decision about which to implement.
Our strong recommendation for any NRO merchant who wants to improve their ecommerce search relevancy is to explore Nextopia. Nextopia is the most effective solution we’ve found for improving the relevancy of Magento search results with NRO.
This service offers:
•
Adaptive algorithms
that
intelligently select the most relevant and accurate results to display
•
Detailed user analytics and behavior
to better inform your decision making
Results from actual Nextopia users:
•
Sell more:
Conversions +225% / Average Order Value +75% /
Sales +110%
•
Great user experience:
Time on Site +243% /
Bounce Rate -75%
/ Searches Performed +500%
•
Internal benefit:
Support Calls -30% / Improved product discovery across the site
•Access to incredibly detailed, exceptionally valuable
user keyword and behavior data
A paid account with Nextopia is required, along with a one-time Professional Services project on our side to implement Nextopia’s service. Price on our side will vary based on the decisions you make regarding how you wish to implement Nextopia.
We do not provide estimates for the 3rd-party fees - for those, you will need to talk to the service provider. Those fees are going to be dependent on the number of searches and amount of traffic your storefront receives. All 3
rd
party services use a feed of some sort, as the search algorithms live on their external system. A
n average Nextopia project requires ~6-10 hours from our Professional Services team, plus the Nextopia add-on and another add-on that generates the product feed for Nextopia. If you are interested in speaking with a Nextopia sales representative, please let us know. We have direct contacts at Nextopia who know our solution and present you with options that are a good fit for you and NRO.
The product feed extension that is required for these third party services also provides you with a tool that can submit product feeds to search engine marketing services, such as Google Merchant Center and Elixr. It's even possible to use it to create an electronic catalog, when used in conjunction with a third party service.
To find out more about these professional services and their associated costs, please contact the Retail Hosted Applications Support team at support.retailapps@ncrretailonline.com.
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