Are you interested in enhancing your WooCommerce product search results page?
Out of the box, WordPress and WooCommerce offer limited search functionalities. By tailoring your product search results, you can boost sales and expand your business.
In this article, we will explore several simple methods to customize your WooCommerce product search results page for an improved user experience.
Why Should You Customize Your WooCommerce Product Search Results Page?
WooCommerce includes a basic product search feature by default, but it has significant limitations. This may prevent your customers from finding the products they desire.
Consequently, you could be missing out on potential sales. If customers struggle to locate what they need, they may not return to your online store.
How does this occur? The default WooCommerce search only indexes the title, content, and excerpt of posts and pages, ignoring any information within custom fields during searches.
This is problematic because much of your WooCommerce product information is stored in custom fields. As a result, none of your product categories, tags, reviews, or other unique attributes will be indexed.
Fortunately, you can address this issue by using a WooCommerce product search plugin.
Now, let’s explore some examples of how to enhance your WooCommerce product search results page.
In this guide, you will discover various insights. You can click the link to jump to the section that interests you the most.
- Video Tutorial
- Enabling Searchable WooCommerce Product Data
- Customizing the Products Displayed on Search Results Pages
- Showcasing Product Search Results in Real-Time
- Discovering Partial Matches and Other Advanced Features
If you prefer written instructions, please continue reading.
Enabling Searchable WooCommerce Product Data
The first step is to install and activate the SearchWP plugin. For detailed instructions, refer to our step-by-step guide on installing a WordPress plugin.
SearchWP is the top custom search plugin for WordPress, utilized by over 30,000 websites. It is also one of the best plugins for WooCommerce, providing more relevant product results for your customers.
Note:You will need at least the Pro plan to access the WooCommerce integration.
For more information, check out our comprehensive review of SearchWP.
After activating the plugin, navigate to the SearchWP » Settings section and select the ‘Support’ tab to enter your license key, which you can find in your account on the SearchWP website.
Next, install and activate the WooCommerce Integration extension.
You can download it from your account on the SearchWP website and install it like any other WordPress plugin.
You are now ready to configure your custom SearchWP search engine.
Simply go to the SearchWP » Settings section and ensure you are on the ‘Engines’ tab. Then, click the ‘Sources & Settings’ button.
A popup will appear where you need to check the box next to ‘Products’ to enable SearchWP to index your WooCommerce products.
WooCommerce product reviews are categorized as comments. If you want these reviews to be searchable, be sure to check the ‘Comments’ box as well.
After making your selections, click the ‘Done’ button to close the popup.
Scroll down to the ‘Products’ section. By default, the plugin searches through the product title, description, slug, and short description.
To enhance SearchWP’s capabilities, click on the ‘Add/Remove Attributes’ button.
A popup will appear, allowing you to include specific custom fields and taxonomies in your searches. In this tutorial, we’ve added the ‘color’ and ‘size’ custom fields, along with the ‘product categories’ and ‘product tags’ taxonomies.
Click the ‘Done’ button, and you will see that the custom fields and taxonomies have been successfully added to the products section of SearchWP.
Next, you can adjust the importance of each attribute. To prioritize a specific attribute in search results, simply move the slider to the right.
Once you are finished, click the ‘Save Engines’ button at the top of the screen to save your changes.
SearchWP will begin rebuilding your search index in the background. After this process, the plugin will provide more relevant search results for your WooCommerce store.
SearchWP seamlessly integrates with any search forms on your online store. If you need to create a new search form, refer to our detailed guide on building a custom WordPress search form. This guide will also show you how to enhance the results page using custom CSS.
Now, visit your WooCommerce store to test the search functionality. For instance, searching for the product category ‘hoodies’ will display all products within that category.
For additional information, check out our comprehensive guide on optimizing your WooCommerce product search.
Tailoring the Products Displayed on Search Results Pages
By default, SearchWP includes all products from your online store in the search results. However, you can customize which products are shown or hidden.
For instance, you can automatically exclude products based on specific criteria, such as those that are discontinued or out of stock. Alternatively, you may choose to display only products that are currently on sale or offer free shipping.
For example, the AeroPress WooCommerce store allows you to filter products that offer free shipping, providing a compelling reason for customers to make a purchase.
To begin, click the ‘Edit Rules’ button located in the Products section of SearchWP.
Currently, there are no restrictions in place. You can create as many rules as necessary.
To set up your first rule, click the ‘Add Rule’ button.
You can now define the conditions for which products should be included or excluded from the search results. In this tutorial, we will exclude all out-of-stock products.
Start by selecting ‘Exclude entries if’ from the first dropdown menu. Then, choose the ‘Product visibility’ taxonomy and enter ‘outofstock’ in the adjacent field.
If desired, you can add more exclusion conditions by clicking the ‘OR’ button. Once you have finished adding rules, click the ‘Done’ button.
Finally, click the ‘Save Engines’ button at the top to save your changes.
To discover additional ways to utilize SearchWP’s rules, check out our guide on excluding specific pages, authors, and more from WordPress search.
Displaying Product Search Results in Live Mode
Live search enhances the search experience on your WooCommerce store by automatically displaying search results as customers type their queries.
For instance, Good Dye Young provides live search results for their hair and makeup products.
As customers type their search queries, relevant products and articles are instantly displayed, enhancing the overall user experience.
To implement this feature in your store, simply install and activate the free SearchWP Live Ajax Lite Search plugin. For detailed instructions, refer to our comprehensive guide on installing a WordPress plugin.
Once activated, your WooCommerce search forms will automatically enable live search functionality.
For further information, check out our guide on adding live search to your WordPress site.
Discovering Partial Matches and Other Advanced Features
Partial matching allows your customers to locate what they are looking for, even if they don’t enter the complete word or spell it correctly.
For instance, the Magna-Tiles online store has partial matching enabled, allowing customers to find products by typing just a portion of the product name.
To activate partial matching in SearchWP, navigate to SearchWP » Settings and select the Advanced tab.
On this page, you can enable various settings to assist users in finding what they need more easily.
Select any of the following options that you wish to enable:
- Partial matches will show results that are not an exact match to the searched term.
- Automatic ‘Did you mean?’ suggestions will offer alternative search terms that can help users find more products in your online store.
- Supporting quoted or phrase searches will enable users to search for exact phrases by using quotation marks.
- Highlighting search terms in the results will assist customers in easily locating what they are searching for.
We hope this tutorial has helped you learn how to customize the WooCommerce product search results page. You may also want to explore how to add wholesale pricing in WooCommerce or check out our recommendations for the best email marketing services.
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