Users today expect instant, intelligent, and predictive search experiences from any search box they interact with, be it within an eCommerce store, documentation site, or knowledge base. A great search experience is often the determining factor for whether a user will stay on the page or leave. One of the best ways to provide a high-end search experience is to utilize Material UI’s Autocomplete component with a back-end server for doing the search itself.

Combining Material UI’s Autocomplete component with ExpertRec as a back-end search server will produce super-fast, massively scalable, and highly relevant results, even when searching in large amounts of data.

In this article, we will explain how server-side search utilizes MUI Autocomplete, along with how a business can configure their server-side search to work specifically with ExpertRec’s intelligent search platform.

Why Client-Side Search Isn’t Enough

Client-side filtering can be performed quickly and easily when the total number of records (example products, articles or pages) is small, but as soon as the total number of records becomes large, (thousands of records) performance issues arise:

• Increase in total time taken for the initial page to load
• Performance degradation due to large amounts of data being present on the front-end
• Outdated search results
• Limited ability to adjust the level of relevancy
• Limited ability to scale (unable to handle large amounts of data)

Server-side search resolves these types of issues by allowing the user’s search request to be sent to a back-end service that will return only relevant results from those entered by the user.

What Makes MUI Autocomplete Ideal for Search UIs

MUI Autocomplete enables users to search and only shows you what’s available as the user enters, including:

• Typing ahead of suggestions
• Navigating with Keyboard
• Being in a Loading state
• Being able to customize how results will be displayed
• Complying with Accessibility standards
• Fetch Data Asynchronously

The autocomplete feature lets you ask the server for suggestions instead of having to search through a list of suggestions.

How Server-Side Autocomplete Works

The process is simple but effective:

1. The user starts typing in the field
2. The input text is sent to the server.
3. The server processes the request.
4. Matching suggestions are returned to the search box.
5. The dropdown will immediately display the new suggestions.

To reduce the number of requests being sent to the server, Autocomplete implementations use the following methods:

• Debouncing
• Minimum character limits
• Caching of recently searched terms
• Loading indicators.

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Quick setup • No coding required • Works on any website

Why ExpertRec Is Perfect for Backend Search

Although a generic backend will provide matches at various levels, an intelligent search solution must have much more than this. ExpertRec is where this begins.

With ExpertRec you can have:

• AI-powered Relevance Ranking
• Typo Tolerance and Spell Checking
• Synonym Detection
• Personalized Results
• Faceted Space
• Real-Time Indexing
• No Code installation options

By integrating your Autocomplete with ExpertRec as your backend Autocomplete solution, your business will benefit from enterprise level search capabilities without having to build an extensive infrastructure.

Customizing the Experience for ExpertRec

Intelligent Suggestions Instead of Simple Matches

The normal autocomplete function only shows exact text matches; however, ExpertRec provides:

• Top searches
• Suggested products
• Types of products
• Content pages
• Trending search results

Therefore, the search box becomes a discovery medium rather than just a place to find something.

Typo-Proof Search Experience

The majority of users may spell incorrectly or misread text. A good server side engine:

• Finds misspelled words
• Provides suggestions for alternative spellings
• Returns appropriate results even when the user made an error

By being able to provide errorless search results, companies will see an increase in the number of sales.

Handling Large Catalogs Effortlessly

If your site has:

• Tens of thousands of products
• Extensive knowledge bases (multiple languages).
• Extensive and constantly updated inventory.

ExpertRec is based on a cloud infrastructure, so the user experience with autocomplete will remain fast and responsive without adding additional load to your application servers.

Rich Suggestion Display

Autocomplete Suggestions can have more than just text; they can have:

• Product picture(s)
• Pricing
• Rating
• Type of Product
• Short description of Product.

By supporting structured data, ExpertRec’s autocomplete can form visually enhanced dropdowns, creating a higher level of user interest leading to more clicks on the products.

Performance Best Practices

To provide the highest quality user experience, keep these tactics in mind:

• Use Debouncing — Wait until the user has finished typing before sending off their request so that you reduce server load and improve responsiveness.
• Limit Suggestions — Delivering only 5-10 highly likely results instead of overwhelming users with too many results is the best way to provide an optimal user experience.
• Show Loading Feedback — Providing users with a subtle indicator (loader) that their search is being processed is a good way to provide them reassurance that their search is going to be successfully completed.
• Highlight Matching Text — Making it easy to read and use by visually highlighting or drawing attention to matched text.
• Cache Frequent Queries — Providing instant access to high-volume searches helps to provide a good user experience.

Real-World Use Cases

E-Commerce Stores
Autocomplete suggestions on product, brand, and category searches – allowing the user to quickly identify a product type and ultimately drive more conversion.

Documentation Portals
By providing users the ability to jump directly to relevant articles instead of having to navigate through multiple menus.

Enterprise Search
Providing employees the ability to quickly find internal resources within a very large enterprise system.

Content Platforms
Identifying trending topics and popular articles as the user types.

Why This Approach Delivers Superior UX

Superior user experiences stem from how MUI Autocomplete as well as ExpertRec produce:

• Search results instantly
• Search results intelligently
• Delivered in a personalized way
• Search results that are scalable
• Delivering professional level of information to the user

When teams use ExpertRec to take care of the heavy lifting involved in developing their search engine, they have more time to focus on building the user experience.

Conclusion

The use of server-side autocomplete is no longer just an option; it is now a requirement for any contemporary digital product. Мaterial UI’s Autocomplete provides the user interface or front-end aspect of creating autocomplete capabilities and ExpertRec provides the underlying intelligence to power the search results.

The combination of ExpertRec with Material UI’s Autocomplete allows businesses to create searching capabilities that can compete with the best searching capabilities on the internet today — fast, accurate, and designed for scale.

If your company is looking to utilize searching as your potential to increase your sales beyond just a utility type of searching, the combination of ExpertRec and Material UI’s Autocomplete is a logical solution to accomplish this objective and prepare for the future.