Turning Browsers into Buyers: A Short Guide to our Top Ecommerce Search & Filters Apps

What do Search and Filters Apps Do? 

When browsing an online store, customers expect to be able to find the exact product they are looking for quickly and easily. Customers will jump to another site if it takes too long or is difficult to find the desired products, which directly affects conversion rates. 

This is where onsite search and filters are invaluable features for your customers. These two tools are crucial in helping customers navigate through extensive product catalogues and find exactly what they are looking for quickly.

1. Search: The search function lets users enter specific keywords or phrases to find matching products. At a basic level, this means returning results relevant to the search term. At a more advanced level, AI and language models can be used to better understand the context behind the search terms, leading to richer, intelligent results. Anecdotally 15% of customers use site search, and they can convert at up to three times the average site conversion rate.

2. Filters: Filters help customers to narrow down listings by criteria such as price, size, colour, and ratings. Advanced solutions take filtering one step further by offering enhanced features such as AI-powered filters (personalised results) and dynamic filters (results based on customer segments or past actions). 

Search & Filters Apps — Top 4 Used by Our Clients

Search & Filter apps — also known as “search and merch” apps or services — on the market range from simple, easy to integrate solutions to advanced AI-driven tools that adapt to customer preferences. Every solution comes with its own strengths and limitations, and the right choice for stores will depend on factors including catalogue size, budget, and the level of customisation required.

Below are four popular search and filter solutions among Shopify merchants:

1. Shopify Search and Filter
2. Boost Commerce
3. Klevu
4. GrapheneHC

What is the difference between these 4 Search & Filter Apps?

Shopify Search and Filter

The Shopify Search and Filter app is an easy-to-set-up, native solution that integrates seamlessly with Shopify stores. With a plug and play setup, it creates a smooth experience, allowing customers to filter by attributes such as price, size, colour as well as custom metafield and metaobject data. Additionally, the app offers functionality to customise product search & recommendations through the use of semantic search and synonym groups.  

Pros:

• Cost-effective: Free.

• Simple integration: Easy to set up. No coding required and seamless integration with Shopify.

• Predictive Search: Incorporates predictive search to improve user experience by providing real-time suggestions and auto-completing queries

• Basic filters: Includes filtering by attributes such as price, size & colour. It is also possible to integrate metafield and metaobject data for filters.

• Basic Analytics: Analytics provide a foundational understanding of user behaviour, such as identifying popular products & no-result queries.

Cons:

• Limited customisation: Offers limited customisation, missing advanced search capabilities like AI-driven personalisation and results tailored by customer segmentation.

• Not ideal for large catalogues: Filtering is not available for product collections containing more than 5,000 items, and search result pages with more than 100,000 items.

• Basic filtering: Does not support highly customised filtering or advanced attributes such as custom tags.

• Limited Personalisation: Does not automatically track a user's past browsing, purchasing or search behaviour, leading to a less advanced personalised shopping experience.

• Multi-language limitation: Limited multi-language support. Predictive search query suggestions are available only in English.

• Limited Analytics: No Predictive Analytics offered

Boost Commerce

Boost Commerce offers advanced search and filtering options, ideal for merchants needing more customisation than Shopify's Search & Discover provides. It offers predictive search, advanced filtering, and customisable search rules to improve search relevance and speed.
While this solution offers more robust functionality than Shopify’s native tools, it’s more complex to set up and may require additional configuration, depending on a store's needs. 

Pros:

• Custom search ranking: Merchants can set rules to prioritise suggestions returned by autocomplete results (e.g., showing “baseball cap” for the search term “hat”).

• Ability to add synonyms and stop Words: Ability to add synonyms for terms or ignore irrelevant stop words for better accuracy.

• Advanced filtering: Multi-level filters allow users to narrow down choices based on various attributes (dolls, Barbie dolls, plush dolls).
  Data handling with metafields and tags: Ability to leverage Shopify metafields and tags to create customisable and dynamic filters.

• Cost-effective for mid-sized stores: Great for stores with a complex catalogue but do not need the heavy lifting of enterprise level AI-based solutions

• Analytics: Provides detailed insights for the following categories: app Impact, collection Analytics, search analytics, and recommendation analytics

Cons:

• Learning curve for customisation: Configuring advanced features such as custom filters and product card alterations requires technical understanding.

• Limited scalability: May face scalability limitations if a store grows significantly, compared to solutions optimised for larger product catalogues.

• Version updates: Upgrades between major versions can involve significant development changes. If merchants have a customised setup, additional configuration will be required.

Klevu

Klevu is an AI-powered search solution designed to deliver a personalised shopping experience. Using advanced algorithms, it provides relevant search results and smart recommendations, continuously improving over time. Klevu also offers powerful features like natural language search and visual search, making it an attractive option for businesses that want to enhance the customer experience. Klevu is an ideal choice for businesses seeking advanced, AI-powered search capabilities and personalised shopping experiences that can boost conversion rates.

Pros:

• AI-powered search:  Leverages machine learning to optimise search results and product recommendations based on customer behaviour, leading to more relevant and personalised results.

• Natural language processing: Customers can search using conversational language, which increases the accuracy of search results and makes the experience feel more intuitive.

• Visual search: Allows customers to search by image, enhancing product discovery experience

• Personalisation: Continuously refines product recommendations and search results, improving customer satisfaction and driving higher conversion rates.

• Smart product recommendations: Uses AI to suggest products based on a customer's browsing and purchasing history, improving upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

• Advanced multilingual capabilities: Harnesses machine learning to determine what shoppers are looking for in a vast number of languages

• Analytics and insights: Provides in-depth insights into site search behaviour, category merchandising, product recommendations, filter usage, and high-performing search terms. 

Cons:

• Higher cost: Klevu is typically more expensive than alternative search solutions such as Boost commerce, which can be a barrier for smaller businesses.

• Learning Curve: It may take some time for teams, particularly those without technical expertise, to fully leverage Klevu’s capabilities and optimise the platform.

• Requires technical setup:Implementing Klevu's advanced features, including using the Indexing API for real-time catalogue updates and synchronisation, requires development work and technical expertise.

• Integration Challenges: Integration with custom-built or complex sites may be time-consuming.

• Abundance: Smaller businesses with fewer products or lower traffic might find Klevu's powerful AI features to be unnecessary.

GrapheneHC

GrapheneHC is a powerful and scalable solution ideal for medium to large ecommerce stores. With its API-first architecture, it can handle high traffic and quickly process large amounts of data. This ensures that customers always see the latest products and information through real-time updates.
GrapheneHC enables personalised shopping by customising product displays for different customer groups, ensuring that search results are highly relevant to visitors.

Pros:

• Optimised for growth: Ability to handle increasing traffic and growing product catalogues without compromising performance. Ideal for rapidly scaling stores.

• Advanced Merchandising: A core strength of GrapheneHC is the merchandising templates and control over merchandising PLPs that your merchandising team will enjoy.

• Personalisation: Tailors a user's shopping experience based on customer behaviour, preferences, and purchase history, improving engagement and conversion rates.

• Enhanced search relevance: Leverages advanced algorithms to display the most relevant products based on customer queries.

• Speed and performance: Known for its lightning-fast performance, ensures that search and filter results are quick despite large inventories.

• Robust analytics: Provides in-depth insights into search performance, customer behaviour, and merchandising effectiveness, helping store owners make data-driven decisions.

• Advanced customisations: Offers a high degree of customisation, allowing merchants to tailor search and product display features to match their specific needs and branding.

Cons:

• Higher cost: This is a more “enterprise” solution, which comes at a more premium cost.

• Steeper learning curve: Due to its advanced features, becoming proficient with the platform can take time, especially for those without technical expertise.

• Technical setup required: Requires developer resources for initial implementation and future customisations.

• Longer implementation time: Go-to-market may be delayed due to the complexity of setup and customisation options required.

• Overhead for smaller businesses: The advanced features and capabilities of GrapheneHC may exceed the needs of smaller stores, making it an overly complex solution for those with simpler requirements.
  
  

Which Search & Filter App is best for my store?

When choosing an ecommerce search, filtering and merchandising solution, it's essential to consider factors such as catalogue size, budget, required features, and the unique needs of your business.

For Shopify stores with small to medium catalogues, advanced AI solutions may be unnecessary. Shopify Search & Discovery provides a simple, effective solution that's easy to implement, requiring no technical expertise. It’s an ideal choice for stores that have straightforward catalogues and don’t need advanced functionalities.

For businesses seeking greater control, customisation, and in-depth insights, a more advanced solution may be the best fit. Boost Commerce is perfect for stores that require advanced filtering, customisable search rules, and basic merchandising features. It offers flexibility and can be tailored to optimise search and filtering experiences. While customisation options like product cards and filter appearance are available, it's important to note that front-end changes require developer resources. Additionally, major version updates, such as from version 2 to 3, may necessitate a rebuild of custom elements.
Klevu, with its higher cost and advanced AI features, may be underutilised for smaller catalogues stores. Businesses should evaluate a platform’s full capabilities and offerings and determine if it aligns with their specific needs before committing.

For stores with medium to large catalogues that require scalability, better control of merchandising, the ability to manage high traffic and large product inventories, enterprise-level solutions such as GrapheneHC or Klevu are highly recommended. As catalogue size increases, the need for a more efficient and powerful search and filter solution becomes critical. These solutions not only handle large-scale operations effectively but also offer richer insights due to their ability to manage large datasets. GrapheneHC excels in high throughput and real-time updates, while Klevu delivers AI-driven search and advanced analytics to optimise the customer experience and boost conversions.