We are often asked how to improve the search feature on the Magento eCommerce platform, as this feature can truly make or break a customer’s experience on your online store. 20% of website visitors who use the search feature already know what they want, and are ready to buy. However, if their searches don’t yield the results they want, you may lose a potentially lucrative sale.
We wrote an article on configuring your Magento search straight out-of-the-box in 2013. However, we have received several questions as to how we feel about the various search features that you can install. To help you make your choice, we’ve taken the time to review three different products:
- Mirasvit: Sphinx Search Ultimate
- Mageworks: Search AutoComplete Magento Extension
- Aheadworks: Search Autocomplete and Suggest; Advanced Search
In our experience as a Magento website development firm, installing one or more of these extensions can make a big difference in conversions. More conversions means more money, so the relatively small cost of the extensions and configuration time is quickly recovered.
Mirasvit: Sphinx Search Search Ultimate
Mirasvit offers a suite of compatible search products, which are combined into the Sphinx Search Ultimate package. You can buy products individually or the whole package:
- Mirasvit Advanced Sphinx Search Pro – Replaces search with powerful Sphinx index.
- Mirasvit Search Autocomplete – Suggestion list pops up when user types in the search field.
- Mirasvit Search Spelling Correction – Offers search term suggestions after typing only one letter in the search box. Helps user spell and find what they are seeking.
No need to reinvent the wheel when is comes to powerful searching. Sphinx is a popular open source search server. Mirasvit created the Advanced Sphinx Search Pro extension to give Magento developers the ability to tap into Sphinx’s power.
The default search in Magento is replaced by the Sphinx search. Sphinx works by indexing your website’s product database and storing search information in a separate data storage. When someone searches the store, the Advanced Sphinx Search Pro extension sends the search query to the Sphinx to get the results and display them.
After installing and configuring this extension, you should notice a significant improvement for your search relevance. For example, when using a sample search electronics database from Magento, searching for “charger” returned two irrelevant results at the top of the page; “Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera” and “Olympus Stylus 750 7.1MP Digital Camera,” and one relevant result, a “Universal Camera Charger.” Advanced Sphinx Search Pro disregarded the irrelevant searches, and only brought up the product that was desirable. Continually, a search for “laptops” had no results from the default search, while Advanced Sphinx Search Pro found four notebook computers.
Everything is pre-indexed and optimized for fast searching, and has achieved a searching speed of more than 500 queries per second against a million skus. Advanced Sphinx Search Pro can be configured to search products, categories, and catalog attributes, as well as CMS (content) pages, blog pages (including AW Blog and WordPress), VBulletin Forum, AW knowledge base, search terms, articles, news and more.
Other great features include multiple store support, multiple language support, unencrypted source code (so you can customize it if need be), no core modifications (making it safe for upgrades), a user guide, and one year of free updates.
By default, this extension uses the built-in sphinx engine. If you want to use the external sphinx engine, you will have to install sphinx on the server. If you like, Mirasvit’s support team will do this for you. Assistance is free for 30 days after your initial purchase, and most user reviews note that there is a quick turnaround time from the support team. This extension also comes with a 30-day money back guarantee. With the Sphinx search tool behind it, Mirasvit has produced a superb search product with Advanced Sphinx Search Pro.
Mageworks Search AutoComplete Magento Extension
Developers often cringe at the idea of a pop-up list from a search box, because it might take too long to load. Shoppers have very little patience and won’t wait while a pop-up list buffs its nails. That’s not the case for Mageworks Search AutoComplete Magento Extension. This extension uses AJAX to make the pop-up list slick and fast. When a shopper starts typing in the search box, a pop up list of relevant results appears beneath, even before they press “enter” or “return.” Shoppers can choose one of the pop-up results, or continue on to the typical full page of search results.
The appearance is fully configurable using a single CSS file. You can choose which product attributes to show in the pop-up, including product name, SKU, short description, long description, price, rating, thumbnail and/or an “Add to Cart” button. If a product is out-of-stock, it can be automatically suppressed.
In addition to searching products, this tool can also be configured to search categories and CMS pages. It can display suggested searches, based on other visitors’ past searches using current keywords. You can even limit how many results appear of each type. For products, you can influence order (name, price, relevance) and group by category. The code is open-source, so you can customize it if necessary. It comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, free extension updates, and free lifetime support.
Mageworks Search AutoComplete Magento Extension is useful if the store owner wants to increase the chances of website visitors instantly finding what they want. It is helpful to fulfill certain requests for search customization. Mageworks is one of the few companies that offers Magento extension customizations that are both reliable and reasonable. Mageworks also makes Instant Cart, which make a responsive pop-up when shoppers add products to their carts — increasing multiple purchases by up to 20%.
Aheadworks: Search Autocomplete and Suggest; Advanced Search
After a shopper types the first three characters of their search term, Aheadworks Search Autocomplete and Suggest Magento Extension kicks into gear with the best suggestions. A pop-up list appears with search results, with a helpful statement, “Most relevant matches are shown. Click Search for more items.”
Its features are similar to Mageworks Search AutoComplete Magento Extension, except that it searches the products and apparently cannot be configured to include categories, CMS pages or blog content. Aheadworks Search Autocomplete and Suggest puts suggested keywords near the top of the list. It comes with 90 days of support and you can purchase more time if necessary; Aheadworks’ support team will install it for an additional fee.
This Magento extension has a few bugs but it’s decent for the price. You might want to consider it if you are also interested in the companion product: Aheadworks Advanced Search — which replaces Magento’s built-in search with Sphinx, similar to Mirasvit Advanced Sphinx Search Pro (above).
If you have gone to the trouble of setting up a Magento store, you are obligated to seriously consider a search autocomplete extension and a Sphinx search tool. Magento’s built-in search can throw a lot of incomplete, irrelevant results at your website visitors. The convenience of auto-complete and the thoroughness of Sphinx-based search results can reduce user frustration and improve sales significantly.
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