Oro’s eCommerce cloud comes out-of-the-box with the world’s most popular search engine: ElasticSearch. And with the release of Oro version 5.1, this functionality is taken to the next level. Are you curious to know what awesome upgrades are coming your way? Keep reading! 

Finding products on your site shouldn’t be as hard as Marlin’s quest in Finding Nemo. But believe it or not, many sites make it just that tricky. They don’t let their customers search by model number or offer faceted search, leaving them to type the exact search term like a spelling bee champion. 

But, having products that are easy to find isn’t just a nice-to-have, especially when it comes to big B2B catalogs. Some of our clients have catalogs with over 400K+ active products. Without a solid search engine, the shopping experience could turn into a real headache.

The cool thing is that Oro’s eCommerce Cloud comes with a fully hosted, lightning-fast ElasticSearch (ES) engine. ES in Oro, supports finding products by name, model, SKU, etc. It also supports finding products by features such as material, brand, size, or color. So, let’s say Joe’s looking for a specific power drill, he doesn’t need to be a memory wizard with model numbers. He can just search for ‘power tools’ and then narrow it down by type, power, and brand. With the release of version 5.1, this functionality is taken to the next level.

Search Results Boosting   

Usually, a product’s position in search results depends on how closely it matches the search term. Yet, often, several products have similar relevance. That’s when you might need to give certain key products a nudge up the ranks by considering customer actions or product revenue. With version 5.1, this is now out-of-the-box.  

If you opt for customer action boosting, it’s like a popularity contest for products. The ones with more attention – views, carting, buying – they get to shine at the top. You can adjust the relative weights for each action. For example, if you set a higher score for buying, the products that get purchased a lot will get pushed higher. 

When you choose product revenue boosting, high-earning products get the spotlight. You can even crank up the boost with a revenue multiplier – bigger number, bigger boost. It’s like giving those cash cows a rocket! 

In the end, whether it’s the crowd’s cheers or the cash’s jingle, your products can shine brighter in searches. Your call – power to the boosting! 🚀 

Fuzzy Search

Fuzzy search allows your site to display results even when the user’s input is misspelled.  Imagine Edgar typing “fawcet,” and we still show him all the faucets we’ve got. And don’t worry, if there’s a real product with the word “fawcet” in it, it will appear before the faucets. 

You can configure how many typos are acceptable. If you go wild and allow too many, the results may be a little funky. For example, with a 3-error limit, looking for “hammer”,  could land you “hamper,” “hanger,” “hangar,” “harbor,” “hauler,” etc. So, you’ll want to experiment a bit to see what suits you. 

Another knob you can twist is the word length. The default value of 4 is a good starting point. This means that for inputs that are 1-3 characters long, fuzzy search won’t be used. Shorter words usually don’t get tangled up in typos. 

And you wouldn’t want error correction when users search for exact SKUs. That’s a different game and often there are many SKUs that are just 1 or 2 characters apart. So, you can configure a pattern to exclude these types of searches from being corrected. 

And one last thing, marketers and merchandizers can get some fuzzy love too. There is a setting to enable it for back-office users. 

Synonyms

You could always create a synonym group in Oro’s ES, where a search for one word from this group would return results for all the synonyms in this group.  In version 5.1, Oro is moving synonym management to the admin console. Now, when your admin catches wind that folks are hunting for taps or spigots, they can work their magic and set the site to show results for faucets. No waiting on developers to work their coding spells! 

Similar Products

Oro Commerce has always supported manually configured related products and upsell products. With version 5.1, they’ve cooked up something even cooler: “similar products.” 

As the name suggests, Similar Products displays products that are similar or complementary to the ones currently being viewed. These are shown on the product detail pages. You can optionally enable the customers to add these items to cart from this page. These clever choices gently encourage your customers to explore more items that catch their interest. 

Search Reports

Newly introduced in version 5.1 is the search results report, which reveals the number of times a specific search term was used, the number of times products were returned, and the number of times it resulted in an empty outcome. 

This report proves handy in grasping what folks are hunting for on your site and how your site is handling these queries. For instance, if you spot “no results” cropping up often for “taps,” you can work some magic and set up a synonym, so it shows “faucets.” 

There’s more in the treasure chest of newness! There’s also the “All Search” Results Report, which logs all the searches done on your storefront. You get a snazzy grid of all the search terms, the count of products found, and the names of the customer and their user who did the search. It’s like your backstage pass to customer curiosity. And oh, here’s a thought: based on how often Harry looks for “taps” and how recent his searches are, you could slide him a special deal – a customer-specific price (CSP) for his upcoming hospital upgrade project. Psst, Oro Commerce makes setting up CSP a breeze, by the way. 

Underestimating how much a smart search system matters to your B2B eCommerce site can harm the customer experience. If users can’t find relevant results when searching for a product online, they might assume your web shop doesn’t have what they’re looking for and just bounce. An effective site search is your ticket to boosting customer engagement, sparking more purchases, and kindling repeat business – the holy grail of B2B success. With version 5.1 upgrade to search functionality, this is now even easier. 

The 5.1 upgrade brings more goodies your way as well. Think product bundles, extra payment choices, order splitting, a tech stack upgrade, and much more – the whole shebang you’d look for in a top-notch, industry-recognized B2B platform like Oro. It’s these regular and quite meaningful updates that make me a big fan of Oro. ❤️ 

Ready to bring these cool new features to your clients? Secure a spot for a demo now!