Better Searching Means Higher Sales
Have you ever been shopping on an ecommerce website and not been able to find what you were looking for even though you knew that the retailer sold the item? You might be surprised how often this happens. GiftSuite ecommerce software solves this problem with our advanced Smart Search system, an intuitive and powerful search facility that will help you sell more. The search field is displayed in the upper right corner of each catalog page as seen here:

Smart Search can be configured to present automatic suggestions which it has learned over time from your customers' search habits. Using both a TypeAhead feature within the form field and a drop-down list of additional suggestions, Smart Search presents relevant words to your customers as they type.

TypeAhead
Type-Ahead is a smart feature which guesses what word your customer is typing and fills in the rest of the form field for them automatically as they type. This does not limit what your customers can enter in any way, but it does help speed their shopping along as well as helping to prevent spelling mistakes by showing correct spelling of even your most difficult-to-spell product and category names.

Auto_Suggest
Auto-Suggest provides a suggestions based upon what your customer has entered into the form field. As the shopper continues to type characters into the field, the suggestions continues to update, narrowing the list of suggestions at each keystroke. Auto-Suggest does not limit what your customers can enter into the form, but will continue to offer suggestions as they type.

The Real Power of Smart Search
The most impressive feature of Smart Search is that it learns from your customers' searching behavior. The powerful predictive engine can present relevant search terms to your customers as they enter characters into the form field. Over time, the predictive engine will accumulate a large database of search terms and its predictive accuracy will increase. Increased accuracy leads to more sales from your ecommerce website.

Relevance vs Alphabetical
To illustrate the difference between alphabetical sorting and relevance sorting, consider the two images below. The customer has typed only the letter "v" into the form. On the left, the suggestions are sorted alphabetically and on the right, by relevance. The system has automatically "typed ahead" and filled in the rest of the word (highlighted in blue) for its best guess as to the search term the customer is typing. In either case, if the word in the field is correct, the shopper can merely click the "Go" button or press the enter key to display search results.

As the shopper continues to enter letters into the search field, the "typed ahead" word AND the list of automatic suggestions will continue to update at each keystroke. As the site owner, you determine whether automatic suggestions are displayed alphabetically or by relevance. You can even change the order any time you like.

Configurable Search Results Pages
The Smart Search results pages can be configured to display any number of rows and columns of items. On the left, matching categories allow your customers to jump directly to a category. A list of links facilitate easy browsing of the results pages. Below each item image is the item name and optionally, the item SKU and/or price. And a Smart Search field appears on every search results page.

Here is a sample search results page:

The bottom line is that advanced search helps visitors to your ecommerce website find what they want to buy quickly and easily and that translates into more sales.