Tips & Tricks: Smartstore MegaSearch "Finding instead of searching"

However, for online stores with a wide range of products and a large product depth, the search provided by a store system comes up against often reaches its limits. The key to success is therefore a functioning, fast and intelligent search.

But experience shows: Customers who cannot find the item they are looking for in a short time and without a lot of effort will leave the Page resp. switch to another online store and provider. In short: They are gone and, as expected, will not be back for a while. Also poorly sorted articles, too long loading and waiting times or even sog. "false positives" (i.e. unwanted, false hits) spoil the buying mood of potential customers. 

A good and successful online store search should therefore above all be intelligent, error-tolerant and performant, in order to quickly and at the right products quickly and to the point. In addition, it should also be so bold and intuitive to filter out the results, which are just not helpful or desired.

The features "MegaSearch" and "MegaSearch Plus" make exactly this possible: The technology behind it comes from Lucene - and the result? A lightning fast and really working full text search from millions of products. Or: simply find what you are looking for faster.

By request from our community we have extended "MegaSearch" by some functions further developed!

More about the practical improvements of 2023

The huge advantage is that "MegaSearch" works without a fixed scheme. This way you don't lose time by setting up a Search index. Nevertheless, the mapping offers you the practical option to influence the individual data storage yourself. 

"MegaSearch" automatically brings all the necessary functions for a professional search:

• Automatic spelling correction
• Intelligent synonym search
• Helpful faceted search
• Matching search suggestions 

"MegaSearch" but is much more than that "just" a pure search. Why? Very simple: The plug-in is very useful due to its top Performance and scalability also ideal as a basis for building store categories incl. Filter suitable and also for comprehensive Data volume designed. 

Our "MegaSearch" and "MegaSearch Plus" for Smartstore were developed with the premises of quality, security and Scalability. This is achieved by using the most extensive automated test mechanisms (especially unit tests and front-end tests). achieved. In this way, the best possible updateability and integrability can be ensured. The search will be completely integrated into Smartstore and builds on already existing features, resulting in an optimal search result! 

To ensure the best possible performance, we use the "MegaSearch" and "MegaSearch Plus" Plug-in but "not only" the strong Lucene search. Rather, the extremely scalable and powerful plug-in is used as an index for the product categories resp. used for filter navigation as well as for successful faceting. 

Our "MegaSearch" and "MegaSearch Plus" plug-in offers the following features:

• Fast integration without customizing
• 100% Integration with the well-known Smartstore standards
• Enormous scalability and performance 
• Filters and facets directly from "MegaSearch" or. "MegaSearch Plus" Plug-in
• SEO-friendly URLs when filtering
• Error-tolerant search with auto-suggest
• Google Analytics integration
• Intelligent and configurable relevance scoring
• Individually expandable and adaptable

Your advantages by using "MegaSearch" and "MegaSearch Plus

• Optimization of conversion through top search results
• Significantly increased performance
• Greatly shortened time-to-market
• Sophisticated faceting options
• Minimal configuration effort
• Distributed use without effort
• Immediately (!) better search hits
• Up to approx. 10% to 33% more turnover
• All in one solution
• Comprehensive support

Smartstore MegaSearch - the state-of-the-art search engine technology directly from the manufacturer 

Develop with Smartstore MegaSearch the searching and finding in your store to a performant and successful pleasure for your customers. Thus, you let your store visitors find better instead of searching for a long time! 

What does MegaSearch offer you? 

The new MegaSearch in Smartstore is extremely fast, which means: Even with millions of records, results and suggestions will be are displayed at lightning speed and with precision. Already during the input of the search term the pop-up window below the input line shows the relevant suggestions and results for the current search.

N-gram search / Related terms: About the function "Did you mean?" suggestions are provided that match the search term . 

For example, MegaSearch tries to use the function "Did you mean?" to intelligently complete the input or if necessary to correct it.

If the separate plug-in "Search Logging" is also installed, matching search queries will appear from the previous ones. Top Search Terms.

At the end of the search, the results are also displayed grouped by manufacturer/brand and product group. With only one click and only relevant results from this manufacturer or from this product group will appear.

A reliable, fast and intelligent search is one of the most important recipes for success for your online store! Not only from the optics and the handling the Smartstore 3 MegaSearch is reminiscent of Amazon, one of the world's most successful online markets. With the clever and robust high-performance search engine for your product catalog, you thus ensure that customers will love your online store and will find the products they are looking for easily, quickly and accurately - and will be happy to select and buy them. 

"MegaSearch" Features List:

• Full text search (pop-up window) for articles. 
• N-gram Search / Related terms: Via the intelligent "Did you mean?" function, similar suggestions are delivered to the search term
• Extremely performant, can also be used for millions of online store article data
• Onlineshop category navigation is possible via search (thus search filter available in all categories, see demo store http://demo.smartstore.com/frontend/ 
• Filtering of search results by product groups included
• Extensive configuration options for indexes, etc. (e.g. versch. "Analyzer", different "query" components, filters, etc.).
• Extensive caching
• Automatic index update per task. Interval arbitrarily configurable
• Extensive search syntax. Spelling correction, ("Did you mean?" / "Did you mean?"): Example: Lep-Top suggests laptop
• Intelligent auto-complete: Samsung beats Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge proposes
• Search in various commodity groups: Washing machine suggests washing machines in home electronics
• Brand search: Washing machine suggests Bosch washing machines
• Top search terms: iphone beats iPhone 7 plus silver (requires the SearchLog plugin)
• Arbitrary sorting of search results
• Controllable weighting of search fields. Thereby influencing the order of search hits possible
• SEO En-/Decoder, also for filters in the form of URL aliases
• Extensive statistics about conversions and search queries, using search logging plugin
• Expandable list of shortcuts to get more search hits. Example: "36cm" finds "36 cm"
• Expandable list of synonyms to effectively get more search hits. Example: "laptop" finds "notebook"
• "compound words": Expandable list of compound words to get even more search hits. Example: "Glasses" finds "Sports sunglasses case" (approx. 63.000 compound words included) 

• Multilingualism: WITHOUT "MegaSearch Plus" only texts of the standard language will be searched
• MultiStore: WITHOUT "MegaSearch Plus" product restrictions for multistores and for customer groups are not considered
• Attributes: Any specification attributes and variants can be defined for the facet search. Facet Search: Based on of attribute search results, you can also intelligently restrict/filter (drill down)
• Faceting by attributes: WITHOUT "MegaSearch Plus" a filtering resp. Faceting by attributes not possible

A facet search refers to limiting the selection according to different characteristics, properties or values. Here acts is a successive (little by little) filtering, which takes place in parallel and is based on the so called "filtering". Flamenco model based.

• Fashion, here, in addition to the type of product, size, color, material and price also play a role
• Electronics, because here can be very different attributes (range of functions, price, etc.) and should therefore be be able to be restricted

• Grouping: (the most meaningful) summary of properties,
• Sequence: Put attributes for the customer in a relevant order (consider the order structure of the customer!),
• Balance: Groups of options should not be too small and not too large - because too many properties can be overwhelm, discourage and appear confusing, as well as
• Redundancy: No unnecessary repetition of groupings or properties.

To be able to maintain the "balance" factor even with many facets, it is a good idea to always use a defined number of e.g. Max. 5 or 10 options to display. The rest can be displayed by "-> more". But also the hiding of less relevant Filter groups can contribute to more clarity and easier comprehensibility. In this case, however, at least the first filter group should already be "unfolded", so that the customer can see the functionality and the presence of further filter properties can.

From a technical point of view, it must be possible to link the attributes to the products so that the database can be updated with relevant product properties can be enriched.

2. Type and positioning

Where should the filtering be placed? That's not so easy to answer across the board. The placement on the left side has the highest expectation conformity for the customers. This is closely followed by "above", which for it - a corresponding staging can be more conspicuous, since the subnavigation is often expected on the left. A combination is also conceivable and can can sometimes be useful (as long as no unnecessary duplications or overlaps occur). The positioning on the right is in any case in this country, as already said, rather unusual. 

The amount of possible properties could speak against a placement at the top in the facet search. When this reaches a critical mass is exceeded, there is a risk that the facet search will become too high/large and then not all products will be visible. This lets However, this can also be done with dynamic elements (e.g. B. through navigation elements "more / show less") to a certain extent compensate.

3. The layout, design and input fields

When it comes to layout and design, visual separation is also an important design element, similar to dropdowns. Decisive is on the one hand, to visually distinguish the filter navigation or facet search from the sub-navigation (if available).

On the other hand, the grouped properties should also be visually separated from each other in an appropriate way, so that here the quick and intuitive comprehension of the property groups is facilitated ("scannability"). Also the title of the filter group should be clearly stand out from the filter properties.

For the design applies as so often in this context: Less is more. The customer should always rely on known and familiar mechanisms be able to fall back on. An example of this is the use of checkboxes instead of self-designed elements with different (unknown) state representations.

Here are two positive examples:

• Color selection elements, if they already contain the colors in the display.
• Sliders that have an appropriately clear scale with arrows as control/marker elements.

In the second example, it is important in which context and area they are used. If the controller is switched off at a particularly low or wide scale is to be used, two input fields may be more convenient for the customer. This should be distinguished on a case-by-case basis and best tested by user testing.

4. Word choice

The choice of words is essential for the success of the filter navigation / Facet Search in various places: The more extensive the assortments are, the more self-explanatory resp. simpler the navigation should also be structured.

Here also, analogous to the optimization of mega dropdowns (Mega Menu), the standard rules for writing for the Internet or. "writing for the web":

• Thus, you should always start with the word with the highest information content, in order to make it easier to grasp (so called "write for the web"). "scannability") to optimize.
• As a rule, short and concrete basic forms ("color") are more suitable in this context than progressive forms or even Calls to action (e.g. "Select colors").
• Labels should be clearly distinguished and, above all, understandable. E.G. can use "Clear filter" instead of "Filter reset filter", "change filter" or "cancel filter" may additionally confuse the customer.

How should the facet search / Filter navigation behave?

The topic of "user experience" also plays a very important role in navigation. In fact, it is still too rarely referred to this User Experience and the "Joy of Use" of these functions are still not taken into account.

The "user experience" should consider these four points:

1.) Speed

There is no substitute for speed - only for... even higher speed!

There's something to that. But you shouldn't take that too literally. Here it is very important that the system gives the customer conveys that the activity of the website is directly the result of his action - that is, causal according to the motto: "Action and Reaction".

Because without this direct feedback, the feeling of loss of control can otherwise arise.

The display and response speed of an interface thus has a major influence on the user experience and conversion. rate. This has also been confirmed by numerous studies and user surveys.

2) Animations and the handling of content - loading, timing, easing and fading.

Now that all the familiar buzzword *ing has been unpacked: How does this change the behavior of the navigation and the user Experience be influenced?

Two important aspects of a good user experience here are, firstly, guiding the customer and secondly, using the Provide controls with a certain haptic ("tangibility"):

"It should be clear and fun to use."

Changes to the page should be directly related to an action, and in doing so should be controlled rather than random.

Or to put it another way: As soon as the client sets or removes a filter, the system should be able to respond by selectively showing or hiding products react.

http://demo.smartstore.com/frontend/sport

To avoid the whole thing looking "hectic" or "jerky", these changes should be presented according to the customer. This Examples can give some insight into what animations might lend themselves to in this context:

Products soft in resp. hide

Here the fade out should be a little faster than the fade in. According to general experience, the values 450 ms for fading in and 250 ms for fading out turned out to be the optimum.

Scroll effect for expansion or reduction

When expanding or collapsing filter groups, it is recommended to make them visible by a scroll effect. Thereby should be should be a corresponding transition function (so called Easing), z. B. an EaseOutBack or EaseOutQuad can be used. 

Slider and alternatives

The sliders should be able to be moved on the scale according to drag and drop. In the best case corresponding input fields should display the current values in real time. These input fields should fill with values inversely and move the sliders analogously to the input. Transition functions are also available here.

Announce changes

Planned changes can be announced by loading animations. Thus, the focus can already be on the desired elements steered or also longer loading processes are packed.

The use of "endless spinning loading animations" has been a common element in reloading elements for a number of years, and often speaks for a dynamic page.

Thereby the loading animation can be a placeholder, e.g. for individual product images, or even the entire filter navigation, facet search or the product overview can be superimposed and provided with a loading animation. This is especially useful for asynchronous loading processes.

Specify viewing direction

Due to the targeted resp. prioritized fading in of content, the view can be directed to certain content and thereby a focus can be given.

But the products are totally hidden in this case and ready sorted again. But unfortunately this results in in some places a rather long gap, which was not filled with a loading animation.

The most important thing at the end - High-quality product data is the fuel for Smartstore

In addition to pure functionality, a powerful product search in Smartstore also requires high-quality product data, to meet the expectations of buyers. Product data is virtually the fuel for Smartstore's integrated Search function; these must be prepared in such a way that our search algorithms produce optimal results, even for complex search queries. can deliver. To achieve this, we advise our customers to prepare their product data for online sales. This will "Product Data Quality Management.

There are several ways to do this, and we'll introduce you to two: 

The company eCube has developed a tool with which you can identify weak points in your product data and make them available for the product search and the optimal presentation of the products for Smartstore. https://www.ecube.de/

The company Pimcore is a free experience management platform that provides e-commerce and product information management (PIM/MDM) together. Your data can then be further processed in Smartstore for product search. https://pimcore.com/

More info:

http://docs.smartstore.com/display/SDDE32/MegaSearch+Plugin 

More about the practical improvements since 2023

Previously, search results were treated as containing at least one search term by default (OR operation). This had that the more search terms were entered, the greater the number of hits found. This dynamic now changes with the introduction of the new MegaSearch option "Hits contain all search terms" fundamental. Now all must appear in the search result (logical AND operation). This has the consequence that the Search results by more precise and targeted the more terms are entered.

Especially for very large data sets with many search results, this option proves to be very helpful. The previous Default sort "Best Results" brought the most relevant hits to the top, but turned out to be a poor choice in the Practice, it was less helpful with a large number of hits. The reason for this is the rough Lucene scoring, on which the "Best Results" sorting is built on. With many hits, this often resulted in similar or identical scores.

It is important to note that this new option increases the likelihood of cases where the instant search may be does not show any hits, but the regular search page returns relevant results. This can be the case if the hits are made via a field which is not included in the instant search for performance reasons, e.g. the long description.

Another aspect is that faceting usually slows down the more search terms are entered. With activated option, this effect can be perceived more strongly.

Smartstore MegaSearch: New features from 5.0.5 to 6.0.0 for even more accurate search results 

• New: Import keywords via the "MegaSearch.Product.Keywords" column of the import file of a product import
• New setting, whether on search pages the sorting by recommendations (according to the order defined for the product) instead of the sorting by relevance is offered
• New setting to separate connected words
• New setting on whether to include meta keywords of products in the search index
• Troubleshooting: The names of unpublished product tags are indexed correctly

Do you have more questions about the plugin "MegaSearch"? Call us or send us an email. Our Smartstore team stands at your personal disposal with pleasure!

Contact:

Email: info@smartstore.com
Phone: +4923153350
SmartStore Inc.
Kaiserstrasse 63-65
44135 Dortmund