Page tree

Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

Table of Contents

Overview

 

YC storefront Storefront search and navigation consists of a number of tools: full text search (including misspellings and synonyms), product tags searchcategory navigationfaceted navigation (price, brand and attributes) as well as static links (managed by CMS). One of the powerful features of these tools is that they are not isolated from each other and can be mixed and matched to create complex compound search and navigation criteria, which is fully integrated into breadcrumbs, SEO friendly and are completely localisable

...


Figure 1: Search and navigation
 

YC search Search and navigation capabilities provide customer with immense amount of control and search refinement capabilities to specify criteria for products they are looking for with precision. This is very important since more than 95% of customers' time is spent searching for the right products. However this does not end there as providing search tools is only half the job, the second half is showing the right results. YC full Full text search engine does this extremely well accounting for misspellingssynonyms and scoring the matched products to ensure that only most relevant results are shown at the top of the list.

YC search Search and navigation capabilities create atmosphere of having a personal assistant during online shopping making the process enjoyable and fun.

All search and navigation capabilities are achieved by YC the search engine through creation of full text search index using a number of product attributes, both core and custom. During indexing process keywords and/or variations thereof are associated with attributes of the product. Whenever a search is performed the index is queried with keywords provided and products' attributes that correspond to those keywords are scored. Exact matches give higher scores whereas partial matches give lower score. Product's overall match score depends on the cumulative score from all attributes in the index. Although it may sound complicated (and technically it is) in practice all this means is that whatever keywords customer searches for or refinement(s) they use the best and most relevant match will always be at the top of the list.  

...

Initially the search is performed on the whole phrase (i.e. if several keyword are used) and if that does not yield results a relaxed word by word search is performed. This ensures that no matter how "bad" customer's keywords are YC will the platform will do its absolute best to find at least something. 'No results' page is a major conversion killer in e-commerce, which is why YC will the platform will always attempt to find a match and save the day. 

Note that each attribute has its own "weighting", which represents the importance of the match. For example an exact match on SKU code is more important that a match on say product name or an attribute. 

Tip
YC The platform has fine-tuned weighted mix of attributes representing best practice. If this does not work well with your type of products it can be adjusted. Contact us to get more information on this subject.

...

Search has built in fuzzy matching which allows to perform partial matches even when letters are rearranged within keywords. This feature allows to produce valid result even when search terms are poor. There could be a number of reasons for this: dyslexia, fast typing, problems with spelling. However no matter what the reasons are YC will the platform will not loose these customers as the right products will be found no matter what.

...

There are several problems with this phrase that would leave other e-commerce platforms in tears but not YCour platform. Firstly Toshiba is misspelt with 'S' and 'H' swapped, secondly we have pollution terms 'in' and 'color' which do not add anything to the criteria but are encountered frequently in descriptions and product names thus creating a flood of irrelevant results and finally we we have colour 'gold' hidden within the phrase. Looking at the result in figure 2 YC correctly the platform correctly identified Toshiba brand and was able to display products that come in gold - results relevancy at its best.

...

As discussed in PIM products can come in variety of attributes (i.e. multi SKU). In many cases these variations are quite visual, for example if the attribute is colour. YC introduces The platform introduces concept of relevancy whereby products that appear in search results are further scored at SKU level thus suggesting the best matching SKU (image, price and information). This feature looks very impressive especially with colour attributes.

...

Customers search for products in the way that is most convenient to them and with ever increasing globalisation multilingual support becomes ever more important topic. YC approach The platform approach is that no matter what customer is searching for or what language they use YC the platform will find a match for it.

...

There are several types of navigation supported by YC:

  • category navigation which is driven by the layout of categories within master catalog
  • brand navigation driven by reachable products within given category
  • product type navigation driven by reachable products within given category
  • price navigation driven by price ranges definitions and reachable products within given category
  • attributes navigation driven by navigatable attributes defined for product type and reachable products within given category

Category navigation represents the most basic type and allows customers to select areas of interest represented by clearly defined category structure. More complex criteria such as brand, product type, price and attributes navigation are derived from products available within current category (and its sub categories depending on catalog setup). Brand, product type, price and attributes navigation are driven by products properties they are also referred to as faceted (or filtered) navigation. Facets can be composed of single values or ranged values also referred to as buckets. Each bucket contains one of more products. Therefore using facets YC is able to provide facets provides clear options to the customer with counts of products within each bucket. This provides a very visual and easy to use mechanism of drill down searching for customers as choosing an option inevitably reduces options for other features gradually narrowing down to a small set of products with all features required by the customer. 

...

Figure 9: Category navigation
 

Image RemovedImage Added

  

Tip
For more information on configuration of search engine please contact us.

...

When a customer navigates to a category YC scans the platform scans the filtered navigation parameters set for that category and if the brand or productType  are specified for given category's product type then single value buckets are calculated displaying names and counts. The names and counts are aggregated values from the products that can be found in a given category taking into account any additional search and navigation criteria applied. For more details how attributes are configured for product type see attribute navigation section below.

...

When a customer navigates to a category YC scans the platform scans the filtered navigation parameters set for that category and if the navigation by price is enabled then ranged values buckets are calculated displaying price range and counts. The ranges are defined by price tier settings on the category. The reason for this is that individual prices can produce buckets which are too granular and not very useful to the customers. Putting prices in sensible ranges will provide a much better option. The price tiers are currency specific as pricing policies may affect the price ranges that business users would like to present to the customers. The range values are derived from price tier settings and counts are aggregated values from the products prices that can be found in a given category taking into account any additional search and navigation criteria applied.

...

When a customer navigates to a category YC scans the platform scans the filtered navigation parameters set for that category and if the navigation by attributes is enabled then for all navigatable custom attributes defined by product type for this category either single value and/or ranged values buckets are calculated displaying facet names and counts. Whether to use single or range buckets depends on the configuration of the product type attribute. For ranged values range configuration has to be specified much in the same way as for price ranges. YC automatically The platform automatically determines which bucket types to use and correctly assigns products to them. The values are taken from unique value setfor single value buckets or from range definitions for ranged buckets and counts are aggregated from the products values that can be found in a given category taking into account any additional search and navigation criteria applied. 

...

Tip
For more information on configuration of search engine please contact us.

Content

 

YC Our platform is a powerful e-commerce tool however the expertise of the business lies with the professionals that run it, which is why content management can be used to put specific content and links in the right places on the website and emails to guide the customers towards the purchase. Because all YC search links are SEO friendly it is very easy to craft specific ones that display certain products and place them in strategic areas on the web site (e.g. menus or content includes). Refinements and products tagging allow to create product listings containing specific brand(s), or point to items on sale, or highlight some products that set the trend. These techniques also applicable to embedable links in newsletters and email communication with the customers.

...