Wondering how to add Ajax search to WooCommerce?
It’ll allow your visitors to get instant search results and find products they’re looking for much faster.
In this tutorial, we’ll talk about the benefits of adding Ajax search to your store and how you can do it with minimal effort.
Let’s dive into it!
What is Ajax Search for WooCommerce
First, let’s make it clear what Ajax search is. Ajax makes it possible to transfer data without reloading the page, so users have a smooth experience.
As a result, Ajax allows site owners to display search results in real-time without reloading the page.
Live search is common on most modern eCommerce sites, and it’s what your visitors expect to see.
That’s why adding it to your WooCommerce store is crucial if you want to succeed online and boost your sales.
Why Add Ajax Search to Your WooCommerce Store
Let’s take a closer look at how Ajax live search benefits your business:
- It tries to predict what your visitors are looking for, helping them find the right products faster
- It makes the search experience of your visitors more interactive and encourages them to search more
- It allows visitors to see how their search narrows as they include more keywords, making them feel you have a smart search
- It makes visitors stay longer on your site and leave it satisfied, which is a positive signal for Google to rank your site higher
After we’ve discussed the advantages of adding Ajax search to your WooCommerce store, let’s look at how you can do it.
How to Add Live Ajax Search to Your WooCommerce Store
The easiest way to add a live Ajax search to your WooCommerce site is to use the SearchWP plugin.
It is the #1 WordPress search plugin that allows you to fully customize how search works in your WooCommerce store.
For example, you can add Ajax search to your site in a few clicks, make product attributes searchable, exclude specific products from search results, and more.
Over 50,000 site owners already use SearchWP to make search on their sites better and deliver the most relevant search results to their visitors.
Here are some other features of SearchWP that make it so popular:
- Search tracking: Collect data on what customers are looking for on your site to better understand their demands and come up with new product ideas.
- Multiple search engines: Create additional search engines with unique rules and connect them to individual search forms on your site to meet your business needs.
- Complete control over search results: Limit search results to WooCommerce products only, to help your customers find the right products faster and boost your sales.
- Fuzzy search: Make WordPress look for partial matches when there are no exact ones, to help your customers find what they’re looking for if they make a typo.
Once you’ve learned why SearchWP is the best solution for adding Ajax search to your WooCommerce store, let’s see how you can do that.
Step 1: Install SearchWP and Activate it on Your Site
The first step is to grab your copy of the SearchWP plugin by visiting the website and signing up for a new account.
Then, you’ll need to go to your SearchWP account and navigate to the Downloads tab.
Once there, simply click the Download SearchWP button to start downloading the plugin ZIP file to your computer.
After completing the download, we suggest that you also copy your license key on the same tab.
Next, upload the downloaded SearchWP ZIP file to your site. You can check out this detailed tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin if you need help.
Upon activation, the welcome screen will appear along with the setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Start Onboarding Wizard’ button and follow the onscreen instructions.
Now, the next step is to install a couple of SearchWP extensions that allow you to add live search to your WooCommerce store in a few clicks.
Step 2: Install the SearchWP Extensions
To get started, you’ll first need to go to SearchWP » Extensions from your WordPress dashboard.
On this page, you can find many useful SearchWP extensions that further extend the functionality of this plugin.
The first extension you need to install is the WooCommerce Integration extension. This extension allows you to integrate SearchWP with WooCommerce so that you can fully customize search in your store.
To do that, you can navigate to the WooCommerce Integration extension and click the Install button.
The next step is to install the Live Search extension. This extension allows you to enable and disable live Ajax search on your site with a click, no coding needed.
To install it, simply go to the Live Search extension and click Install.
That’s it. Now, all existing search fields in your WooCommerce store will display search results in live mode.
Let’s also see how to add Ajax search form to your shop page so that you can get additional pageviews.
Step 3: Add Ajax Search Form to Your WooCommerce Shop Page
First, you’ll need to click Pages in the left panel of your WordPress dashboard.
This is where you can see all the pages on your WooCommerce store.
From here, find the WooCommerce Shop Page and click on it to open it in the WordPress content editor.
To add a SearchWP search block to the page, first click the plus button.
Then, search for the SearchWP Form block and click on it to add it to your Shop page.
Next, you will see the SearchWP Forms block in the content editor.
You can then select your search form from the dropdown menu. To create a custom form, you can see our guide on how to create a search form in WordPress.
When you’re done, click the Save button in the top right corner of your WordPress content editor to save the changes you’ve made.
After you added the live Ajax search form to your shop page, let’s see how it works.
Step 4: Test Your New Ajax WooCommerce Search
To do that, go to your site and perform a search.
For example, we will search for “Beanie” on our test WooCommerce site:
As you try to type in the product name, you’ll notice the live search to work.
It’ll help your customers find the right products, make their user experience better, and increase the number of your sales.
We hope this article helped you learn how to add Ajax search to WooCommerce. You may also want to see our guides on how to search by product tags in WooCommerce and how to make a smart WooCommerce product search.
Ready to add live search to your site in a few clicks? You can get started with SearchWP here.
