How Searchanise works for BigCommerce

General

Searchanise app is a sophisticated site search solution. It helps your customers find relevant information through products, categories, pages, and blog posts.

Once the app is installed in your store, the indexation starts. It takes some time. The app imports search data to its servers and indexes it for search. The search data includes:

• Products that have the Visible on Storefront option enabled and are not hidden from search
• Product Categories that have the Visible In Menu option enabled
• Pages that are published (up to 250 pages)
• Blog posts that are published

All the product fields are indexed to be used for search:

• Title
• Description
• Brand
• Search Keywords
• SKUs for all product variants
• Values of all custom fields
• Product categories
• UPC/EAN
• Meta keywords
• Meta description
• Product condition

As for the categories, you can search them by Title or Description.

As for the pages and blog posts, you can search them by Title and Content.

The Searchanise app starts to work right after the first indexation has been completed. Further indexation of product and category changes occurs automatically. 

You’ll need to start the re-indexation manually to update the search results after you’ve:

• added, edited, or deleted pages, blog posts
• changed store currency formatting
• restored the search results page if you accidentally removed it
• changed the app integration for product reviews
• changed store URL settings
• changed customer groups settings

To start the re-indexation, click the Force re-indexation button in the Searchanise control panel (BigCommerce admin panel > Apps > Searchanise) > Dashboard tab.

The prices are displayed according to the currency settings in your store.

If you set up the Store Taxes setting using the “No, I will enter price exclusive of tax” option, you should configure the default tax rate in the app to display the correct prices in the search results. You can do it in the Searchanise welcome pop-up or in the Searchanise control panel > Search & Navigation > Preferences section > Products tab > Default tax rate(%) setting.

Products with the This product cannot be purchased in my online store option enabled will be considered out of stock.

The app’s main functionality is provided by the Instant Search widget and the Search Results widget. Both of them are highly configurable.

Functionality

Instant Search Widget

The Instant Search widget builds itself into your standard search bar. As soon as a customer starts typing a query in the search bar, the widget instantly drops down suggestions dynamically changing with each keystroke.

If your store theme platform is a Stencil one, the Instant Search widget is added to your store automatically. For the Blueprint theme platform, you’ll need to paste the Searchanise widgets’ code into the theme.

Due to the restrictions in the BigCommerce API, the app scripts start loading after the page is fully loaded if you have the Stencil theme platform. A delay may occur when the Searchanise widget is being loaded for the first time. To change this, follow these instructions.

Read more about the configuration of the Bigcommerce Instant Search Widget here.

Sticky Widget

The Sticky widget is the icon for the search bar in the storefront. It is locked into place, so it doesn’t disappear when a customer scrolls down the page.

The widget appears by default if there is no search bar in your store.

Synonyms

There is a possibility to set up Synonyms for the search terms. Synonyms adjust the accuracy of search results for particular search queries.

Stop words

The Stop Words feature helps to achieve even more relevant search results for your customers. Inside the tab, you can make a list of particular words to be ignored by the Searchanise search engine. The engine will skip those words while processing a user’s search query.

Redirects

There is a possibility to set up Redirects to landing pages for particular search terms. You can redirect to external pages or internal pages, product categories, blog posts, etc.

“Did you mean?” feature

The “Did you mean?” feature helps to avoid giving the customer zero results for their search query.

Search Results Widget

The Search Results widget is a search results page with javascript code that is added to your BigCommerce store. This widget gets search request responses from the Searchanise servers and shows the results in the dynamically generated HTML content. This HTML content is inserted into the Searchanise code. Therefore there’s no theme template in BigCommerce, editing which can change the look and feel of the widget.

You can customize the look and feel of the widget by playing with the color settings and applying Custom CSS.

The Search Results widget contains filters. There are default filters with the most common attributes like price, brand, availability, category, etc. You can adjust them or add new ones.

Read more about the configuration of the Search Results Widget here.

Smart Navigation

Smart Navigation allows visitors to filter and sort products of a category based on product attributes. If you enable Smart Navigation your category page will look like the Search Results widget, but without some specific search elements: 

• Products, Pages, Categories tabs
• Search Results title

Merchandising

You can set up merchandising rules for products and product categories to promote specific items or groups of items. There is the ability to do it for particular search queries or any query.

Analytics

The Searchanise app gathers and introduces the data related to the activities and behavior of your customers: popular search queries and terms, top-performing products, queries that bring zero results, and many more. This data will help you drive improvements to your store, such as search performance optimization and introduction of new products.

App integrations

You can integrate the Searchanise app with BigCommerce apps for product reviews to use their functionality in the Searchanise app’s widgets.

The integration is possible with the following Product Reviews apps:

• Internal reviews – built-in BigCommerce reviews, enabled by default
• Yotpo
• Stamped.io
• CM Commerce
• Shopper Approved

Subscription

After you’ve installed the app, you will have a 14-day trial period.

To have permanent access to the Searchanise features, you need to buy a subscription.  It’s very easy to do in the Searchanise control panel by clicking the View all plans button in the top bar.

You can pay a subscription using the PayPal payment system. When paying with PayPal, you will need to have an active PayPal account. 

Read more about subscription purchase here.

Support

If you have any questions or you need help with the app configuration or the app performance, you can contact us. We will be happy to help you.