Product discovery is essential to an online retail business’s success because it has a major impact on conversion rates. Consumers want to find items as fast as possible, accurately, and with maximum control when searching through large online inventories. While Shopify has a built-in faceted search function that allows merchants to provide their customers with these features, many native solutions do not work as well when they become larger.

So, Expertrec is proving itself as a great solution to help Shopify merchants improve their facet searching and product discovery capabilities.

Understanding Shopify Faceted Search

Customers are able to use multiple filter categories simultaneously (e.g., price, size, color, brand, availability, or custom attributes) to narrow their product listing results with the Shopify faceted search options. A correctly implemented faceted search feature will assist a shopper with:

• Finding a product faster.
• Reducing the friction during the search process.
• Successfully navigating and browsing through large product catalogs.
• Making an educated purchase decision.

While Shopify itself provides basic filtering functionalities, larger and more advanced store retailers require more sophisticated functionality, flexibility, and performance.

Limitations of Native Shopify Faceted Search

When your catalog starts to expand, the native filtering capabilities of Shopify will start to have limitations, including:

• Failed support for advanced and/or complex filtering logic
• Static/“one-size-fits-all” static filters which will be; no adaptive nature for search intent.
• No semantic understanding of keyword matching. Only basic keyword matching is available in native Shopify
• We have no control over merchandising or ranking.
• Problems with performance for large inventories.

The limitations above/gaps will lead to a negative effect on the user experience and the conversion rates.

Why Expertrec Is a Strong Option for Shopify Faceted Search

Expertrec is designed specifically as an Advanced Search Engine Platform that utilizes a combination of Artificial Intelligence with Customization Capabilities, allowing for effective use of Shopify’s Facets without sacrificing speed of delivery or usability.

Experts in Multi-Faceted Filtering

Expertrec allows for the benefits of True Facet Navigation, so that your customers can choose from multiple filters and receive relevant combinations. With its Dynamic Filter Updates based upon each customer’s selections, only those combinations will be provided.

Fusion of Intelligent Search & Facets

Expertrec takes traditional faceted filtering and connects it to Intelligent Searching capabilities through a fusion of the two technologies. For example, when a user is viewing a facet, the facet displayed will automatically adjust based upon what the user searches for:

• The filters will adapt to the customer’s searches
• The unwanted facets will be removed from view
• The results will be accurate regardless of how many facets were selected

This will promote a much smoother and a more educated browsing experience for our customers.

Exceptional Scalability to Accommodate Large Shopify Catalogs

Whether you have hundreds of items or thousands, Expertrec has been optimized for:

• Large quantities of product catalogs
• Complicated classification structures
• Frequent updates of products and inventories

Excellent Speed of Service means that our customers never have to wait to find what they’re searching for on Shopify.

Merchandising Control Driving Conversions

With ExpertRec, faceted search is not just a convenience, it is a selling tool. Merchandisers can utilize ExpertRec to:

• Promote Their High Margin or Featured Products
• Advertise Best Selling & New Arrival Items
• Customize Facet Order according to Their Business Policy

This level of control has limited availability in the default Shopify filter options.

Mobile-Friendly Faceted Search

ExpertRec is optimized for the mobile platform with a clean design and features that allow users to:

• Use Touch-Friendly Filter Options
• Rapidly Filter Results with a Minimal Number Of Clicks
• Provide Outstanding Search Performance Across All Devices

Whether you run a Shopify store or not, using the ExpertRec search engine is ideal if you depend mostly on traffic from mobile devices.

Why Shopify Merchants Choose Expertrec

Shopify merchants prefer Expertrec for faceted search capabilities and advanced features such as dynamic filtering.

When it comes to smart search integration, the difference between native Shopify functionality and Expertrec functionality is that Expertrec has more advanced smart search integration than native Shopify. However, if you want an integrated platform with robust merchandising control and catalog performance, Expertrec will provide you with that.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that, if you want to get the most out of your Shopify faceted search capabilities, Expertrec will give you a much better solution than native Shopify will. If you’re in the market to improve product discovery, enhance the user experience, and grow your sales, you’ll want to look at Expertrec’s smart search engine. To find out more about the capabilities and features of Expertrec’s smart search engine, check out the Expertrec Smart Search Engine: AI-Powered Search Personalization and Custom Search Engine platform!