You may get a stellar website with a great CMS, yet a lousy search may kill all your efforts.
CMS is a piece of software that takes away the hustle of the codework from an average user. CMS solutions give enormous possibilities for publishing, storing, and managing content and also reduce the cost of building a website, making a personal blog affordable for anyone ready to pay as much as 4 US dollars hosting fee a month.
Yet, when it comes to search functionality, they all offer a standardized set of features which is no more enough.
This article will discuss how to enhance your CMS search with third-party solutions and what search features are necessary for you to shine.
Search Functionality Essentials
Imagine you type a word into a search box and get zero results because of a typo. That’s annoying, but that was the reality of the wrong search practices era.
Luckily, today’s websites enhance search rules to make every query successful.
Most companies use autocorrect for typos, prepare suggestions, implement abstract search, include filters to exclude the possibility of zero-result by offering similar items, and break products into categories to help customers pick up from a narrow group.
Yet, most CMSs do not support enhanced search. To solve this, CMS owners apply third-party solutions, either custom code or ready-made SaaS add-ons.
Whatever variant you select, let’s consider search perks you can add to your CMS to make it more search friendly.
The Advanced Search Features You Need To Add To Your CMS
Imagine you are an e-commerce company with tons of products to offer. Or a news site with a long history of articles. In each case, a client can easily get lost looking for relevant content. Here’s how you can help:
Enable Autocomplete
Autocomplete is a must for all modern search engines and does what users like most – save time and effort. This is especially important for mobile users who value the simplicity of searching on the go.
Allow Typos
According to Matt Davis, a researcher at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University, most people read words as whole units, not letter-by-letter.
So, if a person mistyped a word, there is a big chance she won’t see it as a mistake and will think you don’t have a relevant product.
Give Suggestions
It’s a great practice to offer products with similar names or of similar categories when a person types into a search box. This way, you either simplify their search by letting them select from the suggestions or inform users of the available products they didn’t think of.
Enable Feature Search
Do your customers search for a product or a product of a specific price, color, size, topic, etc.? The thing which makes sites like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart stand out is the search customization feature, enabled through filters and sorting options.
Implement Abstract Search
You can search products in two ways: either type the word “books,” and the search engine will return all the websites with the same keyword, or type “something to read,” and the engine will return all relevant pages (books, blogs, articles, suggestions, etc.)
This is a great feature to implement in your search. A client, for example, may type “things to take to the beach” and get all the needed products in one result page.
Improve Personalization
Personalization allows tuning search results based on the client’s previous search history, purchases, likes, etc. For example, you know the client usually selects black jackets, among other color options.
So, for each next type, this client types “jacket” in the search box, and the engine returns black models first.
Collect Analytics
Search analytics is a treasure chest for the growth of your business, and it lets you see which products users need most and which are missing.
Based on that, you may tune your inventory by supplying more in-demand products and reducing the number of off-demand ones.
Enable Cross-site Search
That’s a great feature if you own more than one site or have a great affiliate network. Cross-site search will help users find relevant products, even if unavailable on your platform.
That will make your website a one-stop place to start the search. Can you imagine how this can boost your traffic?
Pro tip: although all the mentioned features are great, do not underestimate the value of the proper product names. According to the Forbes suggestion, the product names should be clear and concise and contain keywords with high ranking on Google.
Final Words
All these search features are a must if you want a website with great UX. The good news is that they are widely available, either as a ready-made solution or possibly to develop custom-made software on demand.
There are multiple offers on the SaaS market. Your task is to select the right piece of software best compatible with your CMS.
