Magento 2.1 is here and with it comes a series of great improvements and extensions. The payment and security enhancements are sure to make life a lot easier for e-commerce customers and companies, and there are some useful additions to the product and shopping format. One of the most interesting developments, however, is the Elasticsearch extension, which looks set to improve conversion rates considerably. Keep reading for a rundown of what Elasticsearch brings to the table.
Enhance your search results
Elasticsearch is a real-time search engine that boosts the search results on your site. Using high-speed full-text searching, it can provide corrections, suggestions and results that make your site much easier to navigate. Here are some of the key features:
• Automatic suggestion (‘did you mean?’) and smart correction to assist customers seamlessly with misspelled queries. A search for ‘lnog-sleeved shirt’ can be quickly amended with a suggestion based on similar text results, rather than bringing up a blank page which slows down the whole process.
• The autocomplete feature gives the customer potential solutions to their query as they’re searching. As the customer searches for ‘personalised’, suggestions will appear below for ‘personalised mugs’, ‘personalised t-shirts’ and ‘personalised trophies’, for example.
• Product attribute searching means that when a customer searches for a particular feature of a product – colour, style, size – your site will produce results that possess that attribute. A search for ‘gold’ will bring up anything from a fully gold jacket to a pair of sunglasses with a golden tint. What’s great is that Elasticsearch also allows you to boost certain attributes for each of your products. Giving a product a higher weight for certain attributes makes it more likely for customers to find it when they’re searching for that attribute.
• Search results are boosted by the suggestion of related categories or CMS (Content Management System) pages . So if a user searches for ‘toys’ they will have various toy category pages suggested to them. As with attribute searching, the category and CMS settings can be configured easily to match your needs.
Boost conversion
The Elasticsearch extension offers ultra-fast indexation and simple configuration, making it easy to handle all of your products easily. What this creates is a user experience that’s easier, quicker, more pleasant and more personalised. Given that Microsoft found the attention span of humans to have shortened to around 8 seconds with the development of the internet, it’s clear you only have a short time to guide your users to the product they’re looking for.
It really is important to get your website users where they need to be as quickly as you can. Giving them incorrect results will cause them to lose attention and visit another site, and the longer a user spends on a site, they less likely they are to make a purchase. Turning these website users into customers and therefore generating sales is what Elasticsearch is great for. It works in tandem with the other key features of Magento 2.1 – such as streamlined checkout – to make not only the searching, but the buying process as quick and easy as possible.
Magento specialists
Looking to boost the search results and conversion rate of your e-commerce website? Fluid Digital is a multi-award winning e-commerce agency. Web design, e-commerce and digital marketing – we’ve got it all covered. For more information, call us on 0161 762 4920 or 0161 452 7146. Alternatively, you can use our online enquiry form and we’ll get back to you.
