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ManimozhiRathinam
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
2,593
Customers expect onsite search to be as comprehensive as Google's. The importance of onsite search lies in the fact that people who use site search are more likely to purchase. Through the Search and Navigation functionality, customers can quickly find the products and services they need. When customers use the search and navigation features of Commerce Cloud Search, they are likely to make more conversions, place larger orders, and view more pages.

SAP Commerce Cloud search offers organizations a remarkably innovative and flexible approach to enhancing customer search experiences.

We will briefly discuss the following in this blog series:




  • The business value of Apache Solr and Adaptive Search

  • Search and Browse Customer Journey Analysis

  • Overview of Apache Solr & Adaptive Search features

  • How to enable and configure Apache Solr

  • How to enable and configure Adaptive Search

  • Additional references and documentation

  • The verification of the launch


The business value of Apache Solr and Adaptive Search




Search and Browse Customer Journey  Requirement Analysis


Please consider the following while planning the search requirements and most importantly elaborate all these requirements and create stories with acceptance criteria.


( Note : search requirements may vary per business , please create the complete requirement list for your business)




  • What properties of the product need to be indexed and made into a searchable keyword?

  • What are facets and filters?Does it need to be category specific?

  • Keywords Search

  • Keyword autocomplete

  • Spell check and suggestions

  • Synonym mapping

  • Auto suggestions for product search

  • Stop Words

  • Excluding certain keywords from search

  • Boosting / Burying the products

  • Sorting options and priorities.

  • Pagination requirements

  • Breadcrumb navigation option


Once the above requirements have been clarified, please complete the following exercise




  • It is critical to understand the out-of-the-box features of Solr Search

  • The Search functionality within SAP Commerce Cloud should meet most project needs, so as a starting point it is recommended to look at leveraging OOTB Solr Search features

  • Find the functional gaps and list the same

  • Look at the configuration options available to address the gap and map it

  • Finally, customize your search to meet your specific requirements


Overview of Search


Solr Search










Solr Search


SAP Commerce Cloud  comes with Apache Solr search- a popular open source search platform. The Search and Navigation module functionality helps your customers to browse through the pages of your web stores and view the search results based on the facet settings. This can contribute to higher conversions, larger orders and more page views from people who use the search and navigation feature  Please refer Apache Solr for more information

Adaptive Search


With the Adaptive Search perspective, you can create search profiles with customized search configurations, including facets and boosts. In the Adaptive Search module, you can manage search profiles. Search profiles allow you to create individual configurations for your search categories and merge them together. The Adaptive Search perspective makes configuring facets and boosting items easy and intuitive. Please refer Adaptive Search for more information

Key Features of Apache Solr





















































Feature Description
Indexes and Scoring When a customer performs a search, Solr assigns a numerical score to each relevant product based on the appearance of the searched term in the product attributes that have been indexed in Solr.
Configurable Search Bar Users can configure the behavior of keyword searches, including whether to show keyword or product suggestions, and if so, how many. They can also control how many characters the customer can type before Solr makes autosuggestions and more. Search Box Component | SAP Help Portal
Keyword search Ability for customers to search across all attributes such as category, product name, id, descriptions and other product attributes . Any product attributes can be configured as searchable .This feature incorporates natural language to deliver precise results and adapts for misspellings, typing errors, and compound words.
Stopwords and Synonyms Stopword functionality allows the creation of the list of irrelevant words that will be ignored when performing a search. Synonym functionality allows improving search experience by extending results with products that don't match search criteria directly.
Keyword Redirect Keyword redirects allow overriding default behavior of search mechanism. For example, a customer searches ”help” and is redirected to the FAQ page.
Query Templates Users can invoke alternative search query configurations using Query Templates. These templates can search on different indexed attributes, as well as different facet settings. The templates can also search on scoring for Exact Match, Fuzzy Match, and Wildcard.
Search term stemming and trimming Support for converting pluralized or conjugated words to their base form for better matching (Perfumes to Perfume)
Keyword autocomplete Ability to provide suggestions for the customer's search terms as they type keywords for quick and relevant product search
Spell Suggestions Ability to provide suggestions for the customer's search terms as they type keywords for quick and relevant product search
Faceted Search Ability for users to navigate large catalogs by choosing filters. Results can be narrowed and broadened by criteria such as brand, categories, stages of build or any other product attributes . Order of Facets display can also be controlled from configuration
Sorting  preference he sorting options  dropdown in the product listing page can be ordered per category  level

Configuration of Apache Solr


Enabling Solar Search  -Enhance Customer's search experience, faster search responses, full text searches, facets, auto-suggestions, and other Solr build-in functionalities.

Solr Integration - Solr Search in Backoffice is integrated on the Cockpit Data Integration layer

Configure Solr Search - Solr Search configuration in Backoffice is defined in the backofficesolrsearch extension in the SolrFacetSearchConfig

Configure Facets - Facets allow for guided filtering by breaking up the search results into multiple categories, showing item counts for each of them

Enable Simple Search & Reference Editors Search - Backoffice provides Solr Search in simple searching and in Reference Editors Search levels. You can use Solr features like auto-suggestions and auto-corrections

Index Field Types - Different field types have to be properly indexed in order to be searchable by Solr

Setup Solr Query - When a Solr Search is executed it has its own Query mechanism to return relevant results from the index

Solr Index Update - Backoffice handles its Solr index integrity when you change data both within and from outside of the application

Reverse Index Lookup for Query Optimization - The reverse index lookup allows you to optimize search query in Backoffice Product Content Management. You can change the default            category-based search from expensive query and fast indexing to inexpensive query and demanding hot update, depending on your requirements

Note : please refer Solr Search in Backoffice | SAP Help Portal For More details on solr configuration 

Key Features of Adaptive Search


The Adaptive Search  brings a new innovative approach to present the products to end customers via search profile configurations on categories , Configuring facets, sort options and boosting merchandising items is easy and intuitive with the  Adaptive Search































Feature Description
Search Profiles Search profiles facilitate easy management of creating search configurations using facet, boost and sorting settings.
Facets Simplify product results by grouping like products into filter-like categories to allow users to find products easily. Choose to hide facets that may not assist with filtering.
Boosts Boosts and boost rules allow you to promote many items at a time, such as an entire category or a brand, using a wizard.
Sorts Define how users can sort products on the storefront ex. according to price, name, relevance, and more.
Grouping Grouping allows you to combine products based on a selected property. The search results return all products that match the selected property.
Personalize Search Results Search Profiles can be assigned to specific target groups to personalize the search settings depending on the user visiting the storefront

Configuration of Adaptive Search


Adaptive Search adds commerce features on top of Solr. For example, you can create a category-aware profile that defines facets and boosts certain results within a specified product category.

1.Install Adaptive Search - You can install adaptive search using dedicated recipes or manually by adding a set of extensions

2.Review Adaptive Search Perspective - The Adaptive Search perspective allows you to create search profiles with customized search configurations including facets and boosts to make searching more effective

3.Set Navigation Context - The navigation context area gives you information about the current context you are working in the Adaptive Search perspective

4.Understand Search Profiles - Activation of search profiles requires the use of services and strategies which interact with each other

5.Configure Search Profiles - Utilize Adaptive Search Perspective to easily configure your search profiles by managing facets, boosts and sorts

6.Load, Calculate, Merge Search Profiles - The calculation and merging of search profiles requires the use of specific strategies and that interact with each other

Note : please refer Adaptive Search Module | SAP Help Portal For More details on  Adaptive search  configuration 

CX Works Resources


CX Works - Search and Navigation – Business UsersThis article covers how a business user can modify and take advantage of the search and navigation features available in SAP Commerce Cloud

Conclusion


The purpose of this article is to discuss some key features and configurations that will assist the business team in planning and strategizing their implementation strategy. In addition, this may assist in performing a gap analysis, evaluating dependencies and possible implementation options. A second part of this blog will describe the configuration in greater detail and provide reference details.


The configuration is explained in detail in the part two of This blog Ecommerce site solr search configuration and optimization strategies to improve conversions -PART II...