Question-answer
What is the Ecommerce package?
30 April 2020
A search engine selects products according to a query. However, a good search takes into account more than just the keywords when displaying results. This article provides information on:
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what information a search can take into account when displaying results;
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whether you can influence the search results and the order in which products are displayed and how is it possible to influence them;
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what is ranking and relevance.
The order of products listing
Every search engine presents its own search results. The validity of a search is determined by the quality of the results. If the result matches the requirements of a user who entered a query, then the output is relevant. If a list contains irrelevant items, customers would get disappointed. Search engines develop special algorithms in order to make the output as correct as possible .
The ranking which is applied by a search engine on a site is an automatic sorting of the output results according to user requests and the algorithms used.
Search should take into account different factors. For example, if clients go to a particular product for a particular query then this product should occupy the most prominent place in search results.
When ranking, Multisearch search can take the following information into account:
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Product name.
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Product category name.
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Product description.
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Item availability (in stock, in warehouse, out of stock, etc.).
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Conversions from search: conversions, adding to cart, sales.
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Behavioral factors.
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Ecommerce tags (bestseller, new product, discount, etc.).
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The availability of a photo for the product (products without a photo will be displayed lower).
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The date the product was added.
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Old and new price.
Management of the output
Probably the most frequent question from customers is "Can we influence the search results by showing the products we want?". And our answer is, "Of course we can!"
Why is it needed?
If you analyze your search, you can better understand customer behavior and conclude that in some situations you should change your search result, for example, by representing certain products higher in the list. Besides, you might display more expensive products at the top, differentiate mismatched products in the search results, or sell a particular brand first. It is needed to manage your listings to speed up the search process, improve the user experience, and increase the number of transactions on your site.
You will be able to:
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show the products that you prioritize based on popularity/ brand/ units sold/ promotional offers on the top;
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assign queries and set up pages of direct conversions for these queries;
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influence the order in which items with a certain status are displayed like in stock/ in warehouse/ on order;
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place out-of-stock items without a photo and description below in the list of found items.
More details about this you can find here.
Basic ways to influence search results
You can influence the order of search results both from the client-end and from the Multisearch-end.
Via a tag
You need to add relevant information to the feed to order items by rating or to set labels, new price, etc. The feed is indexed hourly so that the changes on the site will be visible within an hour.
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To display the tags on products, you should add the tag <label> with the product type value like new product, bestseller, discount, etc.. Products with such tags will be shown higher in the search results.
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To display tags with a new price, you should add a tag <oldprice> with the value of the old price before the discount.
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You should add an upload tag <ordering> with a numeric value that will display the importance of the product in the results. This way, the ranking will take into account the internal meaning/score/popularity of the product.
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You can use some keyword phrases for priority output, for example:
<keywords>Notebook for office, Popular author</keywords>
Manually
1. By assigning product IDs to a specific search query ID.
This Multisearch function allows you to decide which products will be shown at the top of search results. The products to which an ID has been assigned will be displayed above other products in the search results. Additionally, you can configure the search in such a way that it displays only products with IDs. This can be useful for sites that have many products with very similar names, for example Persil XL, Persil XXL, and Persil XXXL. The ID can be one of the product's parameters such as a product's set number or another unique code.
Below you can see the examples of the exact requests and the set IDs:
"Persil XL".
710073 - Persil Deep Clean Technology laundry detergent, 4.5 kg;
640921 - Persil Color Gel Deep Clean Technology laundry detergent, 4.5kg;
"Persil XXL
710074 - washing powder Persil Deep Clean Technology, 6 kg
640922 - washing powder Persil Color Gel Deep Clean Technology, 6 kg;
"Persil XXXL
710075 - Laundry detergent Persil Deep Clean Technology, 9 kg
640923 - washing powder Persil Color Gel Deep Clean Technology, 9 kg;
In this case the search will not display all possible variants for the Persil XL query but will only show those which have been assigned this query`s ID. You will be able to determine the order of products yourself.
2. By using the direct transition function.
You specify certain search queries and the page to which these queries will lead customers. The users will go directly to a category, brand, or filter, bypassing the page of search results.
For example, you can configure search in such a way that with the query "washer" user goes directly to the "washing machines" page and with the phrase "perfume for ladies" to "women's perfume".
3. By giving suggestions and managing them.
Smart search displays suggestions as you type a query.
There are 4 types of suggestions such as the continuation of the search query, categories, brands, and top products. In the example below you can see that the output page has not yet been generated but the customer can already select from suggestions a category, a brand, or a specific product.
Search can automatically identify products to be displayed. However, there is an opportunity to influence the suggestions by setting them yourself. This way, you can take into account the seasonality of products, suppliers' requirements, and promotional items.
Conclusions
Creating a cool user experience isn't that difficult. It's just a matter of offering the customer what they're looking for. Ecommerce giants online stores like Amazon and Ebay have understood long ago that website search needs to be improved.
A search box should help the customers as much as possible and find products that are relevant and correspond to their requests. Multisearch is able to take into account important search information and offer website visitors the most relevant products. Whether it is the demand conversion rates, or promotion offers, you can decide on your own which information should be considered when ranking products on your site. Thanks to this, search will become a real income generator for you.
Take advantage of Multisearch 2 week trial period and experience all the advantages of using Multisearch. Enjoy the easy installation in 2 steps by simply clicking the "Get Started" button at the bottom of this article.
