Many Shopify Merchants struggle to make their store user-friendly. One element of making a store user-friendly is making the products easier to find. The good news is that making products easier to find is as simple as installing one app, Search & Discovery. The app allows merchants to add a search bar, filters, and recommendations. The other elements of improving search can get done in a few minutes.
Search Bar
A search bar needs to get added to a Shopify store. It is not an out-of-the-box feature. Shopify stores need a search bar for the visitors who know what they want. The visitors can type it in and find it. They won’t need to search and scroll.
Collection Pages
Collection pages improve the organization of products. Shopify Merchants can organize products by category, allowing visitors to search by category. As opposed to having to scroll through every product.
For example, let’s say a Shopify Merchant sells different shoes. The store can have collection pages in the navigation bar for every type of shoe. If a visitor wants dress shoes or running shoes, they can find the collections in the navigation bar.
Visitors will only tolerate a messy navigation for a limited time. There are other stores with better navigation, where they can buy shoes. They know this. Don’t make it hard for them to find products.
No collection pages is the equivalent of not having labelled aisles in stores. Imagine how successful Costco would be if they sold shoes and meat in the same aisle.
Filters
Once visitors reach a collection page, they will want to sort through the products. Filters help visitors sort through products. There are different filter options.
For standard filters, a Shopify Merchant can filter by availability, price, product type, tags, and vendor. Availability is whether the product is in stock. If filtered by price, a visitor can sort products by high and low. Product type is a subset of the product category. Where a merchant can be more descriptive about the product. Our Shopify Shoe Merchant might add the shoe’s material here. Product tags help filter and categorize products by details. The Shopify Merchant might use tags such as “red, leather, casual, or men.” The vendor is the manufacturer of the product.
There are custom filters. Custom filters use product options, meta fields, and meta objects. Product options include size or purchase options. Metafields and metaobjects are detailed characteristics of the product. They include age, gender, shoe features, and activity.
The final type of filter is product options.
Boost and Synonyms
Boosts improve on-site search. Synonyms improve external discoverability.
Product Boosts
A Shopify Merchant can use boosts for products that might have a different name. Our Shopify Merchant might sell athletic shoes. Half the US calls them “sneakers.” The other half calls them “tennis shoes.” If visitors were to use either of these keywords, the athletic shoes will not show in the results. By boosting the keywords, the athletic shoes will show up in the search results.
Synonyms
Synonyms are for search engines. Adding synonyms signals to search engines the product is relevant for those keywords. Our Merchant’s athletic shoes would show up if someone searched for “tennis shoes” in a search engine.
Recommendations
Recommendations show up on the product page. Merchants can choose either complementary or related products.
Complementary
Complementary products are products that visitors could buy in addition to the current product. Our Merchant might have laces or shoe cleaner as complementary products.
Related
Related products are alternative products. Our Shopify Merchant might put the same type of shoe in a different style or different brands.
Why?
Why improve product discoverability? Making products more discoverable can increase conversion rates and identify demand.
Conversion Rates
The easier a visitor can find your products, the more likely they are to buy.
Identify Demand
When someone searches for a product in the search bar, a Shopify Merchant can see what the visitor typed. If the visitor is looking for a product that you don’t offer but can, start offering the product. The search bar allows visitors to give feedback without having to send a message.
At the same time, if people are using a certain word to look for a product, you can add the word to the boost list.
Conclusion
Customers having issues finding products is a common problem. This makes having better product discovery a competitive advantage. Nothing listed takes more than a few extra minutes to complete, per product. Any Shopify Merchant can gain a competitive advantage over others in a few minutes.
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