Quick start

Ten minutes, on a store you can search from. It switches the extension on, shows you the change on your own storefront, and leaves you with the loop the rest of the section is about.

You need Product Search installed and your user group given its permission (requirements and install covers both), and you need to have logged out and back in since.

1. Find something your search cannot answer

Before switching anything on, search your own storefront for a brand you sell. Type just the manufacturer's name.

Stock OpenCart matches the product name, the tags and the codes, and nothing else, so unless the brand is in the product names you will get nothing. That is the gap. Note what you typed.

2. Switch it on

Extensions → Extensions → Modules → Product Search → Edit, the Settings tab.

Turn Status on, leave Count Searches and Forgive Misspellings as they are, and press Save.

3. Search again

Search your storefront for that brand name. The products come back.

Try a two-word search as well, such as a colour and a garment, or a brand and a category. On OpenCart 4.1.x this is where you will notice the other half of the change: every word now has to match something, so the results are fewer and every one of them is about what was asked for. On 4.0.2.0 it worked that way already.

Now misspell something. Type labtop, or drop a letter out of a brand name. The search box still says what you typed, and the right products appear anyway.

4. Teach it a word

Think of a word your customers use and your catalogue does not. The common case is a shop that says jumper to customers who type sweater.

On the Synonyms tab, press the +, choose the language, and type the two words on separate lines:

jumper
sweater

Press Save, then search your storefront for the word your catalogue does not use. It finds the products.

5. Come back in a week

Leave the store running and open the Reports tab in a few days.

You now have a list of what people type, ranked, with a column for how often each came back with nothing. Each row with a high zero rate is a shopper who wanted something and left. The buttons on each row open the fix: a merchandising rule with the term already in the keyword box, and, on a row that has come back with nothing at least once, a synonym group with the term already filled in.

Fix a search that returns nothing walks that loop end to end; read it next.