Search Features

SoftSlate Cloud Platform features a powerful, modern search engine designed to help customers find products and content quickly and efficiently. A high-quality search function is essential for any site with an extensive or complex product catalog, as it directly impacts user experience, search engine optimization, and most importantly, your e-commerce conversion rates. Our search features are built to handle everything from simple product lookups to complex multi-criteria searches.

This guide covers the following search capabilities:

Core Search Function

Prominent Search Access The search function is prominently available to users in the header of every page throughout the customer interface, ensuring customers can search from anywhere on your site:

Advanced Search Technology Our core search functionality is powered by Elasticsearch, the industry-standard search engine library trusted by hundreds of major websites worldwide. This technology delivers lightning-fast results that include products, categories, and brands that match the user's search query, automatically sorted by relevance.

Intelligent Relevance Ranking The search algorithm considers multiple factors to determine relevance:

• Frequency matching: How many times the search term appears in the product's name, description, and other text fields

• Content proportion: What percentage of the product's overall text content matches the search term

• Multi-word handling: By default, when users enter multiple words, results include products containing any of those terms

• Fuzzy matching: The system tolerates minor misspellings and still returns relevant results

• Stemming support: Related word forms are automatically matched (e.g., "run," "ran," "running" all match each other)

Faceted Search

Intuitive Result Organization When search results are displayed, the system automatically organizes them using an advanced Faceted Search widget that makes browsing large result sets intuitive and efficient:

Why Faceted Search is Essential Faceted Search provides the most intuitive way for customers to review and narrow down search results. At a glance, users can understand the overall structure of their results and refine their search with just one or two additional clicks.

Comprehensive Organization Categories The faceted search organizes results into these logical groups:

• Categories: Product categories and subcategories

• Brands: Available product brands and manufacturers

• Price Ranges: Automatic price groupings for budget-based filtering

• Average Product Review Ratings: Filter by customer satisfaction levels

• Attributes and Options: Product-specific characteristics (size, color, material, etc.)

• Custom Facets: Business-specific filtering options you define

Real-Time Result Counts Next to each facet option, users see the exact count of products that match that criteria. This eliminates guesswork and helps customers understand how their selections will affect the number of available options.

Dynamic Filtering Experience

• Clicking any checkbox immediately filters results to show only matching products

• Results refresh instantly on-screen as users make selections

• Other facet groups and their counts update automatically to reflect the current filter state

• Users can easily expand their search by unchecking selections

• Multiple facets can be combined for precise result narrowing

• The entire process is fast, intuitive, and helps customers find exactly what they're looking for

Paging and Sorting

Enhanced Result Navigation Every search result listing includes comprehensive navigation tools for managing large result sets:

Available Features

• Pagination: Easy navigation through multiple pages of results when necessary

• Sorting options: Results can be sorted by product name or price (ascending/descending)

• Instant updates: Like faceted search, clicking paging and sorting options immediately refreshes the results on-screen without requiring a full page reload

This seamless integration ensures customers can quickly browse, filter, and sort through your entire product catalog to find exactly what they need.

Product Listings on Category and Brand Pages

Faceted Search and the paging and sorting functions are not just present when a search is performed. They also appear next to the product listings on Category and Brand Pages.

So, just as with the search results, users have the ability to use the Faceted Search widget to narrow down the products shown within the category. In the above example, they see the breakdown of products within each of the main category's subcategories. In addition, there's a breakdown of Brands, Price ranges, and even Glove Sizes.

Auto-Suggestions

Another extremely useful feature for customers searching products and other content is the auto-suggestion tool that is attached to the main search input box.

As the user types in a search term, the system pops up suggestions of products, categories, and brands that match the text they have entered. Before they even finish their query, they might see what they're looking for. Clicking the individual suggestion will take the user immediately to the product, category, or brand page, without even having to review the search results. Typing the "enter" key or clicking the search icon will submit the query as a search and return the regular search results (including the Faceted Search widget).

Administration of Search Features

Automated Reindexing

Each of the above search features are backed by a search index that is generated automatically in the back end of the system. The search index is automatically kept up to date whenever products, categories, or manufacturers (i.e. brands) are created, edited, or deleted via the Administrator.

In addition, on a regular basis in the background, the system will perform a complete reindex of the entire search index to make sure any changes that may have taken place outside the Administrator are taken into account.

Manual Reindexing

At any time, Employees may trigger a full, manual rebuild of the search index (after bulk changes, for example). To trigger a full reindex, navigate to the Search Index Tools link in the Administrator.

Search Settings

Finally, there are numerous settings allowing Employees to turn certain search features on or off, or to control their behavior. To manage the various Search Settings, visit the Search Setting link immediately underneath the Search Index Tools link.