Shopify has became go-to platform to setup an online stores for many ecommerce businesses worldwide. Shopify comes with almost all features that a businesses needs to run their online stores successfully.
But today I would like to share my opinion on why default Predictive Search that Shopify provides is showing irrelevant or no results to your customers eventually affecting your Customer Conversion Rate and why one should not use it if you have many products listed on online store.
Here are few major reasons to back this claim:
1. No Typo Tolerance
We can’t assume all our customers are perfect in grammar and never makes any spelling mistakes. Sometimes people mis-type something or spell certain words differently regional distinction example, “color” is spelled “colour” in british english.
2. No synonymous support
Customer don’t know your exact products name so they will come up with certain similar words that they have in mind for product they want to buy.
One might argue that we could add some keywords to fix this problem and this is somewhat true but its time consuming and still how many similar keywords you might think of also don’t forget jargons used by GenZ’s
For example you have product called “Brown trouser”, now customer might search “brown pants”. In this case default search fails to find relevant product.
3. Can’t understand customer’s intention
By default Shopify search just perform fuzzy search which mean’s when ever customer searches something, search app break down search query in simple words and matches with product name, tags, categories etc. and displays relevant item.
This means it doesn’t understand the intention of your customers and if customer types something like “Women’s clothing for summer” and if you don’t have any keywords or specific titled collection in place. Shopify predictive search will either say “No results” or will display irrelevant products.
4. No multi-language support
Today a businesses can sell their products in any part of the world and If we have diverse customer base then they might speak different languages too. Now if most of the store inventory has english product titles. No way a german, french speaking people might find relevant products if they use their native language in search bar query.
Although I can point out many more drawbacks for using default Shopify search bar, I am going to keep is short for the sake of simplicity.
So you might say Kundan, “What’s are the Solutions?”
I would say there are few solutions as follow:
- There are many smart search AI-powered apps out there available on Shopify App Store just download one.
- Lipy AI Search — Multilingual, Contextual, Advance AI & Voice Search. (Note: I am one of the builder behind this app.)
- Searchandise — Includes Filters & AI search + Voice Search
- Boost AI Search & Filter — Good for unlimited AI Searches.
2. You can try hiring a developer/agency in you have budget.
3. If you know how to code you can setup your own semantic search you can start from here — Blog Link
Conclusion
In short, if your online store can display better search results based on customer intent, the likelihood of them purchasing the product increases. Eventually increasing your sales. So if you have many products listed on your store stop using default search bar and switch to AI-enabled searches.
Helping your customers find more relevant products is better that showing no products.