Live Search in Adobe Commerce: How it improves CX?

How many times have you abandoned a purchase just because you couldn’t find the product you were looking for even after specifying your requirement in a site’s search bar? Or, completely stopped buying from a brand because of inconsistent or unrelated search results?

When it comes to enhancing customer experience in the competitive eCommerce ecosystem, It is one way of enhancing your CX and engaging shoppers with personalized solutions. The story here is, customers that use site search are more likely to complete their purchases, only if they can easily find what they wish to buy. Most shoppers are not discoverers but browsers, who input relevant keywords, categories and information to explore just their right product for them. However, to accomplish this goal involves hours and hours of manual entry of rules on the backend, which is not an ideal solution.

Enter Live Search, an Adobe Sensei-powered tool from Adobe Commerce.

What is Live Search in Adobe Commerce?

Live search is an AI and machine learning tool that ensures faster, personalized, and relevant results for B2C shoppers. Live Search in Adobe Commerce combines the capabilities of industry-leading AI along with the machine learning power of Adobe Sensei with catalog information to deliver exact and personalized search results for every shopper query at a lightning-fast speed. This feature is how merchants can deliver “search-as-you-type” experiences, improve product discoverability, and stay on top of user search inquiries.

See the video below for a detailed understanding of Live Search in Adobe Commerce.

Prior to Live Search, Magento 2 offered Elasticsearch capabilities that enabled users to type in their search queries and view relevant results. Elasticsearch was reliable, easy-to-use and configure and did allow adding synonyms, etc., to boost search performance. However, as customer demands became more complex and dynamic, Elasticsearch couldn’t help create customized customer experiences or take note of evolving shopper needs. Therefore, at the Adobe Summit 2021, Live Search was introduced to take search experiences to a next level by leveraging AI, machine learning, and other leading-edge technologies.

Adobe Live Search Storefront

In this new era of online shopping, consumers want to quickly and easily find what they are looking for without having to browse an endless number of options. Live Search can easily become a leading competitive advantage for merchants and commerce-preneurs due to its ability to seamless product discovery.

Adobe Live Search Storefront includes components that give shoppers a view of your store to effortlessly complete the purchase. The storefront section might include creating an account, main menu, promotional offers, discount offers, popular products, expert recommendations, subscription, catalog page, shopping page, etc.

Features of Live Search Storefront

#1. Search as you type : Adobe Sensei can automatically filter recommended products for a query. A concise image of top search results in a popover appears as shoppers type queries into the search box. The live search feature of search as you type shows results for a query of two or more characters, and up to 20. This way, customers can easily find what they are looking for and didn’t know about. This helps to invest time in site optimization, enhancing the overall customer experience.

#2. View all results : By clicking ‘view all results’ from popover storefront in the foote,r all the search as you type results will appear.

#3. Searchable Attributes: To ensure a quick search, following attributes are always searchable – SKU, name, and categories. Searchable attributes save time and give highly targeted results. The results will appear clear, concise, and relatable.

With a focus on speed, relevance, and ease of use, Live Search Storefront is a revolutionizer for shoppers and merchants alike.

How does Live Search functionality improve user experiences?

Customer experience is a key differentiator for brands. It is how merchants/retailers can forge long-term relationships with their shoppers, and turn them to advocates. And with the fast and intelligent search results of Adobe Live Search, brands can level up their customer experience game.

Some benefits of CX with Adobe Live Search are :

#1: AI-powered Live Search: It is built on the Adobe Sensei platform, which makes search quicker and more relevant to the consumer demands. The artificial intelligence capabilities of Live Search enables personalization by understanding buyer’s search activities and tracking the shopper’s preferences, buying behavior, frequency, etc., improving CX.

#2: Extended product recommendation capabilities: When implemented correctly, the ability to recommend products based on search queries can be beneficial for businesses and users. From a shopper’s perspective, it saves time browsing through the entire catalog and instead focuses on products of interest. From a merchant’s end, it helps close more sales faster and cater to a group of serious shoppers.

#3: Intelligent faceting: Adobe Sensei automatically selects and filters each search query using AI technology to refine results, better understand search intent, and compare it with the product attribute metadata to deliver relevant search results. Users can narrow down their search and find suitable products faster by applying multiple filters simultaneously. The best part,merchants no longer need to configure search rules manually.

#4: Synonyms management: Shoppers may use phrases or synonyms while searching. The onsite search bar needs to recognize these product synonyms to understand search intent. Adobe Commerce’s Live Search enables merchants to describe one-way or two-way synonyms. One-way synonyms help shoppers to navigate products in one direction, for example, when searching for summer clothes. Two-way synonyms broaden the search results for shoppers; for example, searching for necklaces will show lockets, pendants, chains, etc.

#5: Merchandising rules: Adobe Commerce Live Search enables merchants to create rules to boost, pin, bury or hide products, optimizing search results. Merchants can :

Boost Products – Displaying products at the top line of the search to close more sales.
Bury Products -A merchant can display products lower so as to give a better exposure to other products.
Pin Products – Pin top-selling and most-sold products on top of search results.
Hide Products – If products are not in stock or suffer from quality issues, merchants can hide products.

Conclusion

Customer experience is a game changer in the eCommerce industry. And one way to enhance CX is getting the search right. Adobe Live Search feature delivers actionable insights into changing trends, shopping behaviors, and search queries to merchants who can then use it to refine product discoverability and conversion rates. Implementing Live Search, available free for existing Adobe Commerce platform users helps bridge the gap between product search and purchase.