How to Elevate Your Shopify Experience
If you’ve created your own online storefront on Shopify, you know that some of default settings to the way that your shop looks can leave a little to be desired. This isn’t only in the way that your store looks, but it can also be in the way that people who are visiting your site are actually experiencing the website you’re using overall.
That doesn’t mean, however, that all hope is lost when it comes to making your Shopify website a more exciting and overall positive experience for site users and potential customers who pay your store a visit.
One of the biggest ways that you can really upgrade your Shopify store in terms of how your customers perceive it is by changing up the Shopify search bar. Generally speaking, customers can search through your site’s products using the Shopify search bar and inputting different queries and keywords. Frequently, the results are going to depend on what your shop offers.
But how can you make the way your Shopify search bar functions better for your shop’s needs? In particular, it will be a good idea to focus on what you would like to accomplish on your site and then find a good way to execute on those goals.
With the Shopify search bar in particular, you’re either going to need to have some knowledge of coding, to follow a coding tutorial about customizing the Shopify search bar, or to hire someone else to do the coding and customizing for you. Whichever way you choose to go, the following are some good ideas to get you brainstorming with what you’d like the tool to accomplish.
Permitting Customers to Search with Partial Word Match Functionality
This particular function can be pretty useful if your customers are likely to search your shop for a couple of different niches, but are only interested in shopping for one of these in particular at that moment.
For example, if your shop offers an assortment of furniture items and accessories to potential customers, you might have a pretty large inventory that will need to be searched through before users can find exactly what they want. From a customer’s perspective, this can be pretty frustrating because of how long this can take.
Additionally, this can be pretty overwhelming for some customers, as they might get overwhelmed with the sheer number of items that you’re offering for sale. The feeling of overwhelm or frustration can actually be enough to drive a customer away from your online store and spend their money elsewhere, which isn’t in your best interest.
So what does this look like in action? If your customers are coming to your store because you offer furnishings and accessories for the home, they might come to you if they’re interested in styling their bedroom at your store.
By enabling partial word search functionality on the Shopify search tool, your customers can simply type in “bed” and be given results based on the partial keywords and phrases that they query. For example, this might show results for bedspreads, bedframes, and bedside tables.
And this works for more than just this particular circumstance, being almost universally useful for those with larger inventories and more variety in their Shopify stores.
Filtering with Categories and Sub-Categories in the Shopify Search Bar
This function can also be incredibly helpful in the case that you have multiple categories or items, and/or multiple niches that you happen to serve on your Shopify store. Allowing customers to filter their searches in this way can be pretty helpful for them, letting them find exactly what they’re looking for without extensive and exhausting scrolling through your site.
This can be extraordinarily helpful, allowing potential customers to find exactly what they’re looking for much faster than if they had to look through your entire catalogue of items. For example, if we continue to think about our shop as a furniture store, we can filter in a variety of different ways.
If a customer is looking for seating, they can look at couches, as well as futons, sectionals, and armchairs. This way, not only are they able to filter through all of the seating options, but they’re also able to find a more precise style that they’re after. Not only can potential customers filter in this way, but it’s also possible to filter by color or type of wood.
By making the search and filtration system easier on your customers and site visitors, this speeds up their search process. Additionally, by making it easier to find exactly what customers want, they’re significantly more likely to make a purchase at your shop.
This is pretty preferable, especially if the alternative is that they leave your store and choose to shop somewhere else. So not only does improving the Shopify search bar on your storefront improve the likelihood that customers will find what they want, you’ll also be far more likely to get another purchase under your belt for your store.