Best Ecommerce Search Engine for eCommerce Stores and Marketplaces

Many entrepreneurs tend to underestimate a search in their online stores. But its importance is immense. An eCommerce search tool can be a powerful marketing measure that does drive sales.

Now on the market, there are a number of companies that offer intelligent search apps for eCommerce stores. A proper smart search enhances the shopping experience, offers precise search results, product suggestions, and whatnot. These search features can greatly boost your business. 

In this article, we’d like to talk about eCommerce search technology, take a look at the statistics and future of this tool, and introduce the best eCommerce website search engines.

What is a search engine for eCommerce websites?

A smart search app or search engine—a set of programs designed to search for information. It can be a part of the global search engine, the internal computer system and also websites.

The main criteria which helps to define whether this search engine is good or not is the degree to which the query matches the search results. The search engine is evaluated based on the morphology of the language.

What are smart search items?

Let’s see what an intelligent eCommerce search can do and what are the main smart search features:

• Full-text search—Search results are given according to certain words or phrases.
• Natural language processing—A combination of machine learning and AI which help to realize the used language regardless of keyboard layout.
• Search by synonyms—search results are prepared with consideration to synonymic words.
• Autocompleting of words—advanced eCommerce store search can suggest the following query and suggest it. 
• Search by certain characteristics—it is about filtering products according to specific characteristics. The more adjustments you have in the filter, the more accurate will be the search results. 
• Cross-selling and upselling suggestions—people who are searching for something are ready to make a purchase and these two techniques help to boost their interest for other products, too. 
• Typo-tolerant search—there are a lot of misprints and spelling errors when searching. This feature helps to reduce them and find correct information.
• Search according to geolocation—there is a need for showing results according to geolocation on some marketplaces. The advanced intelligent eCommerce search covers this issue.

What are the benefits of using merchandise search engines?

• Boost sellings as the website can suggest the most relevant data—such an approach makes people return to a convenient website to make repeat purchases.
• Increase the average bill via cross-selling and upselling—eCommerce search services often manage fields such as “related products” or “customers also buy”. 
• Good customer experience—with a smart search website becomes more appealing for its customers since they can find whatever they want easily. It influences the image of a company and makes your services even more user-friendly.

Best eCommerce search providers 

We will go through several examples to tell about and compare the best eCommerce search engines. We have chosen affordable and good eCommerce searches which definitely will match your business.

1. Searchanise

Searchanise is one of the best search engine for eCommerce that integrates with all the popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, CS-Cart, Magento, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. It powers over 12,000 e-shops worldwide, handles over 100 search queries per minute, and can raise conversion up to 20% on average according to the developers.

Searchanise offers tons of cool features to improve customer shopping experience:

• Full-text search (you can even search by product description)
• Auto-suggestions
• Autocomplete
• Typo correction
• Sophisticated built-in dictionaries
• Customizable search results drop-down
• The ability to promote products in search
• A full-featured search results page
• Powerful analytics
• Product filters
• Cross-selling and Upselling
• Shopify Kit integration (virtual employee by Shopify)
• And more

Searchanise knows that “zero results” search queries can be disastrous to store conversions. Their latest developments are aimed at employing AI to provide the best search experience for shoppers and help owners make timely decisions when managing the store.

Sennheiser, Philips, Durex, Boeing, National Geographic, HBO, and MediaMarkt are among Searchanise’s customers.

Searchanise is available for free for stores with up to 25 products. The paid plans start from 9$ per month.

2. Instant Search+

Instant Search+ is a smart search app for Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and Wix. You can also order custom development for your eCommerce platform. The search powers over 20,000 eCommerce stores worldwide, handles over 100 million daily user sessions, and over 70 million products.

The feature set is similar to Searchanise and covers all the customer search demands:

• Autocomplete, auto-correction, typo correction
• Suggestions
• Related products
• Upselling and cross-selling
• Product filters
• Advanced search analytics
• Synonyms and antonyms

Instant Search+ offers a unique feature—visual search. If a customer doesn’t know what term to type and how exactly describe the product, he or she can take a picture on their smartphone and upload it to Instant Search+. The app’s AI will find the item a customer’s looking for. Handy!

The service offers a free plan for 50 products and 50 monthly searches. The cheapest plan starts from $14,99 per month.

3. Algolia

Algolia is a smart search engine for Shopify, Magento, and WordPress. It is also available as integration for some other frameworks such as Symphony 2, Laravel, Heroku, and others. Algolia powers over 8,500 websites and serves 70 million queries per month.

The feature set includes:

• Query suggestions
• Federated search
• Content showcase like “Popular”, “New”, etc.
• Search analytics
• Powerful API for custom integrations

The company also offers voice search and geo search. Their solutions are intended for various websites including eCommerce and corporate. For example, Algolia powers Stripe, Twitch, Lacoste, Dior, and others.

Algolia is free for personal and non-commercial use. Paid plans start from $29/month.

4. Klevu

Klevu is nice AI-powered eCommerce search tool for Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. They also offer custom development for other eCommerce platforms. Klevu currently powers over 3,000 websites worldwide and have served over 251 million searches.

The smart search featureare similar to Searchanise and Instant Search+:

• Personalized search
• Autocomplete, auto-correction
• Suggestions
• Self-learning search
• Trending search
• Search results page in the native theme
• Dynamic product filters
• Analytics
• Merchandising

What makes Klevu stand out from the rest of the solutions is its B2B functionality. Klevu allows you to show the assigned customer group prices in search and hide some search results from specific customer groups. It also supports search by SKU.

The pricing starts from $499 per month.

5. Omega Instant Search

Omega Instant Search is a good website search for eCommerce projects based on Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. This search application guides your customers through search to instantly deliver precise search results with minimum effort.

The feature set is not as rich as other search apps offer but it still has all the basic functions of smart search app:

• Autocomplete
• Spell correction
• Fallback search results
• Custom product filters
• Store-wide search

The company offers free installation and setup. You won’t need a developer to integrate Omega Instant Search to your eCommerce site. Plus, their team will guide you through the configuration process.

Omega Instant Search is free for stores with up to 500 products. The paid plans start from $9 per month.

FAQ

How does eCommerce search work?

eCommerce search services combine machine learning and AI technologies therefore they provide a wide range of features such as advanced filtering, typo-tolerance, autocompleting, search by synonyms, etc.  

How to choose an eCommerce site search solution?

Actually, today there are a lot of affordable and good eCommerce searches so it is difficult to choose only one best eCommerce website search engine. But we recommend you to pay attention to our top 5 intelligent search apps: Searchanise, Instant Search+, Algolia, Klevu, Omega Instant Search.

What is the role of a search engine in eCommerce? 

By making eCommerce search more convenient, you contribute to customer experience mostly. It makes customer experience better and boosts sales. Search users convert into customers about 10 times more likely than regular visitors which means that search should be as convenient as possible.

What is the fastest eCommerce search?

In our opinion, one of the best eCommerce search engines according to the fast download speed is Searchanise. They also provide full-text search, autosuggestion, analytics, filters, typo-correction, cross- and up-sellings and other advanced features. 

What is the price of implementation of a smart search app?

Some providers give an opportunity to try their intelligent search apps for free and then the price for subscription starts from about $10-$40 per month.

Summary

Website search for eCommerce is an important tool which might seem simple and not important technology. Yet, it is a misleading way of thinking. An intelligent ecommerce search is a must-have technology which increases sales and makes your marketplace or website convenient to use.