Introducing Live Search in Adobe Commerce
Most of the e-commerce stores need a good search. Historically, the search was not the strongest part of the Magento platform and usually required either investing a dedicated budget to the 3rd party service providers or into an additional development. With Magento 1, we had it with a very simple algorithm that didn’t provide good results most of the time. With Magento 2, there’s a new search engine option based on ElasticSearch with a much better search results relevancy and additional features such as synonyms, but usually it requires some tweaks and modifications.
At Adobe Summit 2021, a new service for Adobe Commerce called Live Search was introduced and officially released in July 2021.
Adobe’s official search solution is aimed at bringing the search to a new level by utilizing AI (Adobe Sensei) and other modern technologies. All lucky owners of an Adobe Commerce license may use this service free of charge by installing the corresponding module from the marketplace Magento Live Search.
The most interesting fact about this new module is that it represents the new service-based approach that Adobe claims to move as the main idea for the future versions of the platform. Great to see that after quite a short period of time after announcement the solution is already available. Even if it is in beta version only.
—Yaroslav Rogoza via Atwix.com
Global e-commerce is seeing year over year quarterly growth rates over 39%, helping drive toward $4.2 trillion in e-commerce sales this year. As more and more purchasing shifts online, the digital experience becomes even more critical. Every element counts, particularly onsite search, which is the starting point for about 30%–60% of shoppers. Surprisingly, studies show merchants have a long way to go to create better site search experiences:
- 27% of sites won’t show useful results if the shopper misspells just one character
- Only 49% of sites allow shoppers to refine their search with faceted navigation
- 61% of sites have weak support for search synonyms to help shoppers navigate
Merchants can’t afford to lose site search shoppers because they are 2 to 4 times more likely to convert. When shoppers feel friction, they are quick to abandon the site for an easier solution, resulting in lost revenue for the merchant.
In our latest mid-quarter release available to Adobe Commerce (Magento) customers, we are proud to introduce Live Search powered by Adobe Sensei. This new feature helps our merchants create better converting site search experiences and be more efficient with their time. Live Search combines the power of Adobe Sensei AI with commerce data to return highly relevant search as you type results — all while simplifying back-end management. Merchants can create rich search experiences, right in the Adobe Commerce admin, to help shoppers quickly find what they want, and what they didn’t know they needed. Here’s a closer look at some of the key features:
Intelligent Faceting
Uses Adobe Sensei to automatically pick and intelligently order the best facets/filters for each search query so shoppers can easily refine results. Merchants no longer need to manually configure facet rules, freeing up time to make other site search optimizations.
Continue reading the full update on the Adobe Blog.
