When it comes to providing a Product Search Function for WooCommerce stores you’ve got a few options. Fair warning here though, unless you have a WooCommerce store with a customer base that demands product search you could be refining a very disused part of your store.
On-site search happens very infrequently in most cases. Relying on your customers using on-site Product Search should probably be a last resort.
Think about it. If your customer is forced to search (after performing a search to land on your site anyway!) you’re creating friction.
Therefore avoiding reliance on search within your WooCommerce store should be the aim.
Great user experience, organisation and flow within menus and pages should naturally lead a customer around your eCommerce store.
BUT that doesn’t mean we should completely neglect on-site product search for WooCommerce stores.
Table of Contents
WooCommerce Product Search Options
WooCommerce Default Product Search Widget.
Yes – WooCommerce comes with a “Product Search” Widget by default. You’ll find it in the list of Widgets in your WordPress Admin dashboard.
We typically see this widget neglected in terms of styling by most themes and page builders.
This WooCommerce “Product Search” widget performs the basic and useful function of searching ONLY the product catalogue, and presenting the results on a page styled like a Product Category page.
Does what it says on the tin.
May need some custom CSS to make it look how you’d prefer.
WooCommerce Product Search Field Plugin (Paid)
This basically provides a few more advanced features for product searches and is available from the WooCommerce Extensions Marketplace.
We’ve talked about the benefits of buying WooCommerce Plugins from the Extensions Marketplace before, and they apply here. The fact that this plugin will get tested against every WooCommerce core plugin release does provide you with the reassurance that your site search won’t completely break due to an update.
That of course comes at the cost of $49 per year. But hey, how much time could be wasted fixing a plugin compatibility issue? Or maybe if your site relies heavily on on-site Product Search, how many sales could you lose whilst a plugin clash hampers your site?
Advanced Woo Search – WooCommerce Product Search
For a free plugin, this one really does smash it out of the park in my opinion.
With 50,000+ downloads as of right now there are plenty of others that agree. It’s a highly supported plugin, and there are tonnes of users who are also using this plugin meaning the bug-catch and fix cycle is fast. This seriously reduces the risk of fundamental clashes with the core WooCommerce plugin.
The ability to preview search results as you type has become a bit of an expectation across the internet as users don’t want to blindly search – they want to be guided on their search, as they’re searching!
Advanced WooCommerce Search nails it as far as we’re concerned. The search function is great, the search results are displayed on a page that’s styled exactly like a WooCommerce Category page (again fitting with user expectation) and obviously, only the product catalogue is searched.
Problem Solving WooCommerce Product Search
Divi Builder Search Module for WooCommerce Products – Issues
It’s a well established issue with MANY threads on the Elegant Themes support forum in that the Divi Builder Search Module DOESN’T support searching only for Products in WooCommerce.
Instead you’re presented with a list of posts, pages and product pages in a “blog search” design, NOT in the styling of a WooCommerce category (archive) page.
You do however have the ability to insert a “Widget” module with the Divi Builder and then you can insert a product search widget such as the default WooCommerce Product Search widget.
It’s a basic fix – and probably the intention of Divi to utilise built in WooCommerce Search functionality as opposed to duplicating the functionality within the Divi Builder or Divi Theme.
Of course you can also use Advanced Woo Search in a widget in the same way as above, or insert the search box with a shortcode of course.
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