Do you want to make your WooCommerce product search results page more personalized?
WordPress and WooCommerce have restricted search features by default. You may enhance sales and develop your business by tailoring your product search results.
We’ll show you a few simple ways to improve the user experience on your WooCommerce product search results page in this article.
What are the benefits of customizing the WooCommerce Product Search Results Page?
WooCommerce comes with a built-in product search feature by default. It does, however, have major drawbacks. This could result in your clients being unable to locate the things they require.
As a result, you may be missing out on sales opportunities. Customers may not return to your online store if they can’t find what they’re looking for.
What causes this to happen? WooCommerce’s default search indexes only the title, content, and excerpt of posts and pages. When running a search, it ignores any material contained in custom fields.
This is a problem because custom fields store a lot of your WooCommerce product data. As a result, no WooCommerce product categories, tags, reviews, or other unique properties will be indexed.
Fortunately, a WooCommerce product search plugin can help you fix this issue.
Let’s look at some instances of how you might improve your WooCommerce product search results page.
Making Product Data from WooCommerce Searchable
Installing and activating the SearchWP plugin is the first step. See our step-by-step guide on installing a WordPress plugin for more information.
Over 30,000 websites use SearchWP, which is the greatest custom search plugin for WordPress. It’s also one of the greatest WooCommerce plugins because it gives your customers more relevant product results.
To use WooCommerce integration, you must have at least the Pro plan.
To enter your license key, go to the SearchWP » Settings page and switch to the ‘Support’ tab after activation. You can locate it on the SearchWP site in your account area.
The WooCommerce Integration plugin must then be installed and activated.
You can get it from the SearchWP website’s account section and install it just like any other WordPress plugin.
You’re now ready to build up your unique SearchWP search engine.
Simply go to SearchWP » Settings and make sure the ‘Engines’ option is selected. Click the ‘Sources & Settings’ button after you’ve arrived.
This will open a popup where you should ensure that the checkbox next to ‘Products’ is selected. SearchWP will be able to index your WooCommerce products as a result of this.
Product reviews on WooCommerce are saved as comments. You should also click the ‘Comments’ option if you wish to make reviews searchable.
Once you’ve done that, shut the popup by clicking the ‘Done’ button.
To go to the ‘Products’ section, scroll down. The plugin will only look at the product title, content (description), slug, and excerpt by default (short description).
By clicking the ‘Add/Remove Attributes’ button, you can broaden SearchWP’s scope.
This will provide a popup window where you can search for certain custom fields and taxonomies. We’ve included the custom fields ‘color’ and’size,’ as well as the taxonomies ‘product categories’ and ‘product tags’ for this lesson.
You may now click the ‘Done’ button, and those custom fields and taxonomies should now be visible in the SearchWP products area.
The weight of each attribute can then be adjusted. Simply move the slider to the right to increase the importance of a given attribute in search results.
When you’re finished, go ahead and save your settings by clicking the ‘Save Engines’ button at the top of the screen.
In the meanwhile, SearchWP will begin rebuilding your search index. After that, the plugin will be ready to start providing your WooCommerce store with more relevant search results.
Any search forms on your online store will be used by SearchWP automatically. If you need to add a search form, follow our step-by-step instructions on how to make a custom WordPress search form. This will also teach you how to use custom CSS to customize the results page.
You can now use the search tool in your WooCommerce store. The product category ‘hoodies’ will be searched for, and all products in that category will be displayed.
Customizing Which Products Are Displayed in Search Results
By default, SearchWP includes all of your online store’s products in the search results. However, you may want to define which products should be displayed and which should not.
You can, for example, automatically exclude products if they meet certain criteria, such as being discontinued or out of stock. Alternatively, you may only show products that are on sale or have free shipping.
The AeroPress WooCommerce store, for example, allows you to look for products with free shipping. This is a fantastic way to entice customers to make a purchase.
To begin, go to SearchWP’s Products section and click the ‘Edit Rules’ option.
There are currently no rules in place. You are free to make as many rules as you like.
Click the ‘Add Rule’ button to start creating your first rule.
You can now define which products should be shown or removed from search results based on certain criteria. All out-of-stock products will be excluded from this lesson.
First, from the first drop down option, choose ‘Exclude entries if’. Then, in the field next to the ‘Product visibility’ taxonomy, put ‘out of stock’.
By using the ‘OR’ button, you can add other circumstances that should be omitted. Click the ‘Done’ button after you’re through adding rules.
All you have to do now is save your adjustments by pressing the ‘Save Engines’ button at the top.
Using Live Mode to Display Product Search Results
Live search will improve your WooCommerce store’s search experience by displaying search results as your consumers type their queries.
Good Dye Young, for example, provides real-time search results for its hair and beauty products.
While the consumer submits their search query, relevant products and articles are shown promptly, creating a superior user experience.
Simply install and activate the free SearchWP Live Ajax Lite Search plugin to add this to your own store.
Your WooCommerce search forms will automatically give live search after activation.
Other Advanced Features: Finding Partial Matches
Even if your consumers don’t type the entire term or spell it correctly, partial matching will help them locate what they’re looking for.
Partial matching is available on the Magna-Tiles online store, for example. Customers only need to type a portion of a product name into the search box to find it in the results.
To enable partial matching in SearchWP, go to SearchWP » Settings and select the Advanced tab from the drop-down menu.
You can enable several settings on this page to help your users find what they’re looking for more easily.
If any of the following possibilities appeal to you, check them out:
- Partial matches will also provide results that don’t exactly match the term you’re looking for.
- Corrections for “Did you mean?” will offer a slightly alternative search word that will match more products in your online store.
- Supporting “quoted/searches” will allow your users to search for exact terms using quotes.
- Customers will be able to find what they’re looking for in the search results if terms are highlighted in the results.
We hope you learned how to personalize the WooCommerce product search results page with this article.