For WooCommerce store owners looking to improve product discovery, reduce bounce rates, and ultimately boost sales, having a powerful search function is critical.
A smart search is essential if you want your customers to easily find what they’re looking for, especially if you have thousands of products.
That’s because many online shoppers will quickly abandon your online store if they cannot find their desired products. But with the right plugin, you can boost the search experience on your WooCommerce store.
In this article, we’ll show you the best way to make a smart WooCommerce product search without writing any code.
What is a “Smart” Product Search in WooCommerce?
It’s hard to call the default WordPress search engine a smart one, as it has a lot of weak points.
To begin with, it doesn’t reliably or extensively search for WooCommerce product attributes.
The thing is that WooCommerce stores products and their attributes as posts and custom post fields, respectively.
But the native WordPress search engine is not good at including additional information stored in custom fields while performing a search.
So making them searchable is essential if you want to provide your customers with the most relevant search results.
Besides that, the default search also lacks many basic features when it comes to search. For example, you can’t change the search results order, keyword stemming, using synonyms, show live searches, and more.
As a WooCommerce store owner, your income directly depends on your visitors’ ability to find the products they’re looking for. That’s why it’s essential to ensure that this process is as straightforward as possible.
Now, let’s take a look at how you can add a smart product search to your WooCommerce site.
How to Make a Smart WooCommerce Product Search
The easiest way to make a smart WooCommerce product search in your store is to use a plugin like SearchWP.
As the best WordPress search plugin, SearchWP gives you full control over your site search.
Over 50,000 WordPress site owners already use it to deliver better search results to their visitors.
Using this plugin, you can boost product discoverability and increase the number of sales.
Here are other things you can do with SearchWP:
- On-site search activity tracking: Would you like to look at what your customers are searching for on your site? SearchWP tracks your visitors’ searches and allows you to view them directly in your WordPress dashboard.
- Exclude pages from search results: Are there any unwanted pages in the current search results on your site? SearchWP allows you to hide them in just a few clicks.
- Prioritize specific search results: Launching a new product and want as many people as possible to notice it? Put it at the top of your store’s search results with SearchWP.
- Enable fuzzy search: Do you want customers to find the right product even if they make a typo? Simply turn on fuzzy search in the SearchWP settings.
Now, let’s take a look at how to add a smart WooCommerce search to your online store using SearchWP.
The first step is to grab your copy of the SearchWP plugin by visiting the website and signing up for a new account.
Once done, you can go to the Downloads tab in your SearchWP account dashboard.
After you get there, simply press the Download SearchWP button to save the plugin ZIP file to your computer.
Then, copy the license key at the same tab, as you’ll need it soon to activate SearchWP.
Once the download is finished, the next step is to upload the SearchWP plugin ZIP file to your site. If you need help, then please see this step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you’ll see the SearchWP welcome screen and the setup wizard. You can click the ‘Start Onboarding Wizard’ button and follow the onscreen instructions.
After you’ve installed and activated SearchWP, it’s time to install the WooCommerce Integration extension.
This extension ensures seamless integration of SearchWP and WooCommerce, allowing you to easily customize how search works in your store.
First, you’ll need to go to SearchWP » Extensions from the WordPress dashboard. From here, simply navigate to ‘WooCommerce Integration’ and click the Install button.
Once you’ve installed the WooCommerce extension, you’re ready to start making smart WooCommerce product search on your site.
How to Add a Custom WooCommerce Search Widget
Would you like to add a custom WooCommerce search widget to your site? It’ll help your visitors find the products they’re looking for faster.
For example, you can limit this widget to search only for specific product categories. Or make it consider specific product tags, like refurbished or bestseller.
Using SearchWP, you can easily create and add a custom WooCommerce search widget to your store.
The first step is to customize the default search engine and include WooCommerce products as a source.
To get started, you can head to SearchWP » Algorithm from your WordPress dashboard. Then, press the Source & Settings button to select new sources.
After that, you’ll see the sources that the default engine uses. These include posts, pages, and media.
Make sure to select ‘Products’ as a source and then click the Done button.
When you’re finished, simply click the ‘Done’ button.
Now, you can scroll to the top and click the Save button to store your changes.
After that, you can add a WooCommerce widget to your site’s widget area.
To start, simply go to Appearance » Widgets from the admin panel and click the + sign. From here, simply add the ‘Product Search’ widget block.
For more details, follow our step-by-step guide on how to add a custom WooCommerce search widget.
How to Add a WooCommerce Search Form to Your Shop Page
Do you want to add a WooCommerce search form to your shop page?
That’s a great way to boost your sales and allow visitors to navigate your store faster.
Using SearchWP, you can add a fully featured WooCommerce search form to your shop page within a few simple steps.
For more details, see our guide on how to add a WooCommerce search form to your shop page.
How to Search By WooCommerce Product Attributes
Would you like to make your WordPress site search by WooCommerce product attributes?
Product attributes include features such as product size, color, price, and other details you would like to add.
With SearchWP, you can easily include categories, tags, custom fields, and other attributes in the search process.
Simply scroll down to the ‘Products’ source and click the ‘Add/Remove Attributes’ button.
Next, you’ll see a new window with attributes like title, content, slug, excerpt, and author.
You can then add custom fields like product color or model and taxonomies (tags, categories, shipping classes) to include in the search process.
When you finish, don’t forget to click the Save button at the top right once again to save your changes.
That’s it. Now, your WordPress site supports search by WooCommerce product attributes.
To learn more, you may want to see our guide on how to search eCommerce product details in WordPress.
How to Search in WooCommerce Category
Would you like to let your customers search by a specific category? That’s super convenient and allows them to find products much faster.
Using SearchWP, you can easily limit specific search forms to search by specific categories or create a category select search form.
This way, you can provide your customers with more relevant search results and boost your sales.
For more details, see our detailed tutorial on how to search in WooCommerce category.
How to Add Fuzzy Search to Your Website
Do you want to make it even easier for your customers to find a product they’re looking for?
You can do that by enabling fuzzy search in SearchWP.
This feature allows you to make WordPress search for partial matches. It ensures that your customers can find a product they’re looking for even if they make a typo in its name.
For example, if while searching for marshmallows they misspell it as “marshmellows”, they still will find this sweet product.
Using SearchWP, you can enable fuzzy search just by selecting a single checkbox.
For more details, see our step-by-step tutorial on how to add fuzzy search to your WordPress site.
How to Prioritize Specific Products in Search Results
Would you like to bring some of your products to the top of the search results on your site?
This is a great way to promote new products and increase the number of sales.
With SearchWP, you can prioritize specific products in the search results for certain search terms within minutes using the Custom Results Order extension.
For more details, check out our detailed guide on how to prioritize specific search results in WordPress.
How to Exclude Specific Product from Search Results
Are there some products or pages you’d like to remove from search results on your site?
This helps you avoid cluttering search results and gives your customers more relevant matches.
SearchWP allows you to exclude any pages, posts, or WooCommerce products from search results with just a few clicks.
Using the Exclude UI extension, you will see an option inside the WordPress block editor. Simply enable the option and SearchWP will exclude it from the search process.
For more details, follow our guide on how to exclude pages from site search results in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you learn how to make a smart WooCommerce product search. You may also want to see our guides on how to search by SKU in WooCommerce and how to restrict WooCommerce product search to title only.
If you’re ready to add a smart WooCommerce product search to your site, then you can get started with SearchWP today.
