There is no way for a purchase without prior search – mostly buyers come to your Magento online shop with a distinct idea of what they are going to purchase there. Successful search feature makes it faster for them to find the right product, and the chances that a purchase will be completed become higher.
Magento platform gives an opportunity to make search better in some way, for example, with specifying synonyms for search terms, yet it is not enough to make search brilliant. That can be made with some extensions, providing the following most important features:
1. Attribute management. The problem to solve here is a number and order of attributes. Making priority arrangements you set where the system is going to look for a term in the first place – in a product name, its description or somewhere else. Special extensions like Advanced search Magento provide this feature and at the same time respect all kinds of Magento platform settings that you may already have.
2. Autocomplete feature. Customers do not want to write a full device name any more as search machines like Google have made autocompleting a habit. So follow their preferences and introduce an autocompleting machine at your Magento store as well – that will save time and make good impression on users.
3. Choosing search type. Using extensions you will get more opportunities to decide in what way your search machine should work. There are three options available – looking for more or less similar terms, searching the exact words which were entered by purchasers or using both ‘like’ and ‘complete’ search. You will be able to change your choice whenever you like which makes your Magento store more flexible.
It is worth remembering that search determines the level of site usability in many ways, so one just can’t but take its importance into account. With the 3 features described you will make buyers appreciate your site for being fast and providing information to the point which will certainly make them go back and do shopping there again.