An e-commerce site is quite similar to a physical store in the way it organizes its products.
You can offer hundreds of items at attractive prices, but if they’re hard to find on the shelves, the customer will leave without making a purchase and go to a store where they’re sure to find what they’re looking for.
In a conventional store, you’ll physically organize your products so that they’re easy to spot.
You’ll use clear signage so that customers can easily find the section they’re looking for.
On an e-commerce site, it’s the search engine that makes it easier for visitors to find the product they’re looking for.
So it’s imperative that all the items you offer for sale are properly indexed in the Prestashop search engine.
Why index your products in Prestashop search?
When visitors arrive on your Prestashop site, they generally have a fairly precise idea of what they’re looking for.
People rarely visit an e-commerce store just to browse, as they would in a conventional store.
So it’s imperative that visitors looking for a particular product can find it quickly and easily, if you want to turn them into customers.
Unless the product can be accessed directly from the site’s home page, for a promotion for example, the user will undoubtedly use the search engine.
It must be easily accessible, from any page on the site.
The results it delivers must be clear, and take the user directly to the product page he’s looking for.
To achieve this, the search engine needs to know that the product exists.
It must also be able to match the name entered by the user with the item searched for.
To achieve this, the product must be indexed, i.e. referenced by the search engine.
How do I index my products in Prestashop search?
It’s perfectly possible to manually index a product from your catalog in the Prestashop search engine.
However, if you need to repeat the operation for a large number of products, it would be wiser to automate this task, which will quickly become tedious.
Manual product indexing
Alias and keyword
If you modify a product’s listing in the catalog, no problem – it will automatically be re-indexed in the search engine.
You may also wish to associate specific keywords with a product.
In this case, go to the Prestashop store settings and select the “Search” menu.
This takes you to the administration page, where you can manage the Prestashop search engine.
This allows you to manage aliases and keywords.
An alias allows you to define and associate variants of the keywords normally used to find a product.
For example, if you sell computer products, you can define the aliases “microprocessor”, “microprocessors”, “processors” to the keyword “processor”.
This way, if one of these aliases is used by the visitor in their search, they can be automatically redirected to the products corresponding to the keyword “processor”.
Aliases are very useful for taking into account typos, misspellings and approximations made by users in the search field, for example.
To define which aliases to create, you can rely on the search engine’s statistics, which will tell you the words most often typed by users.
A keyword, on the other hand, is directly associated with a product.
When you enter this keyword in the search field, the associated product automatically appears in the results.
This is a direct association.
It’s also possible to associate a “weight” with each keyword.
This weight characterizes the importance and relevance of the keyword, and influences the ranking of products in the user’s search results.
Keywords appearing in a product’s name or reference should be given more weight than those appearing only in its description.
This improves search accuracy.
Prestashop indexing update
The “Indexing” section shows you the number of products indexed by the search engine in relation to the total number of products.
It is then possible to rebuild the entire index or add missing products.
A simple click launches the indexing process.
Once completed, the number of products indexed should be equal to the total number of products in your catalog.
If you frequently add products to your catalog, as is often the case for an online store, this operation will quickly prove time-consuming and repetitive.
Automatic indexing
You can automate the indexing of your products in the Prestashop search engine.
To do this, you need to create a “cron” task.
This is a task that will run automatically at a frequency that you define.
For example, you may decide that it will run once a week if your catalog doesn’t move much, or daily if you manage many products and update your catalog frequently.
The cron job is created via a link in the search engine dashboard.
How do I configure the Prestashop search engine?
Defining aliases and keywords, and regularly indexing Prestashop products are good practices.
But this is not enough.
If the Prestashop search engine is not properly configured, it may not provide the best possible results.
Search in word
The default search is a comparison between the text entered and the beginning of the keyword.
Activate this option to search within the keyword.
Find the exact ending
Thanks to this option, it will be possible to match a word entered with the end of a keyword.
Minimum word size
It is not necessarily useful to compare the first letters entered by the user with the indexed keywords.
There’s very little chance of obtaining a consistent result with just two letters, for example.
That’s why the minimum word size is set to 3 by default.
This eliminates linking words such as “the”, “of” or “and”.
Words not to be indexed
It is also possible to define a certain number of words not to be indexed.
In this way, it’s possible to eliminate expressions that won’t return any results.
This option is typically used to eliminate words such as “with”, “why”, “what” or conjugated verbs from the search.
To conclude on Prestashop indexing
As you can see, users will only buy a product from your e-commerce site if they can find it quickly and with a minimum of effort.
So it’s vital that all the products in your catalog are properly indexed.
The choice of keywords and aliases is crucial.
Prestashop search engine performance has a direct impact on site sales.
As a Prestashop expert with many years’ experience in e-commerce, I can help you optimize the indexing of your product catalog in your site’s search engine.
Please do not hesitate to contact me so that together we can determine the best solution for indexing your products.
