Search Function for Ecommerce Site

[jassdoit]

Hello, I do have this ecommerce site vondaz.com and I am also a newbie of the funtion of the ''search function''. Anyone has the idea of unexpensive way to set up by yourself or any tools you can intergrate with it !?

Thanks alot
ERIC

[elecsell]

dear,

if you are looking for a fast, free solution i do suggest using the google search box

find this useful article about adding google's search bar to your website

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can..._web_site.html

Regards,

[marc77]

Where do you want to have a search box... on your shop or an overall site search ?

For overall site searches, Google, Yahoo, Ask, nearly all search engines, allow you to put their search on your site limiting results to your own domain name only. The "price" you have to pay is the logo of the search engine that appears on your website.

In order to implement a search box allowing people to search through your shop and product database, you need to contact the support department of the software developer that created your e-commerce solution.

[marc77]

By the way, I noticed your website loading horrible slow (at least from my location). You may keep an eye to this issue (actual results at http://host-tracker.com/check_res_ajx/983331-0/share/ ).

[jassdoit]

The google search is fine. But it looks less prefessional (but it is free, so you cant expect from free stuff)

I know a site call http://www.nextopia.com/ which offer $1k year to intergrate the search engine into the website, and I see some store is using it smoothly, may be in the future I will find some professional to do that.

And, thanks marc, I notice the delay when opening the site sometimes, but my hosting is from yahoo. May be I should contact yahoo to solve this problems.

Thanks guys

ERIC

[marc77]

And, thanks marc, I notice the delay when opening the site sometimes, but my hosting is from yahoo. May be I should contact yahoo to solve this problems.

At least you should let them know about the problem, but due to the fact that Yahoo offers discount hosting solutions, I doubt you can await much help (it is just their system performance).

Telling the truth, before you are going on and spend $1.000 USD per year for a site search, invest this money in a better hosting solution... (that would be like buying a Ferrari but cannot afford the gas to drive ;-)

You may find at resource sites like http://www.hotscripts.com or http://cgi.resourceindex.com "site search" tools you can install on your server (if you have the ability to install CGI/Perl any other software on your hosting account). This may require some time to implement it, but beside the license fee you don't have other expenses.

[jassdoit]

All right !! I will look out the software and scripts for that !!

THanks
ERIC

[Stormie823]

Don't know if you found a solution yet... but Google does have a search function that you can pay for. It's a $100 a year and it's called their Google Custom Business Search Engine. On this page you will need to select business edition.

We have it on our corporate site and it allows for search within our site. You also get business listings as well as building your own custom search engine, which you can build more than one of. It's very easy to use and implement into your website.

The free one is ok if you don't mind having ads of your competitors on the page also.

Compared to how much a custom search is to build for your site this is a very inexpensive alternative.

[TipPro]

Here are two more systems to look at..

SLI-System's site search is a bit expensive for a lot of small businesses, about 1k a month; but I believe this system handles misspellings the best for small business solutions.

Another site search is SearchSpring.net, they are a small start up and they actually list their price on their Web site (which is rare for a lot of the site search solutions). Currently it runs for about $100 a month. This solution is not amazing on misspellings but better than average. There is a nice feature to list synonyms that you can also use to add common misspellings for your industry.

One really important feature you need to get with your site search is reporting. A report on search queries that do not come up with any results is near priceless. You will learn so many new ways of referring to your products.

[jassdoit]

hello, marc77, regarding the horrible speed on my website. I talked to yahoo. They said it is my problem due to scipts and evething. Also they gave me a link http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ which check what is need improve and so on.

After I checked it, the suggestion is not really helpful which ask me to cut back on the picture and links, which is impossiblem

Anything can help you can think about !?

Thanks so much again !!
ERIC

[marc77]

They said it is my problem due to scipts and evething.

This could just affect the CPU performance slightly (very, very slightly)... what kinds of servers is Yahoo using when a single website can make them working slower (8088 CPU ? ;-)

I also tried this "optimization tool" for a website of mine... well, the recommendations all go into the direction "cut content of your site to load it faster" - a strange advise ;-)

But as I thought, they have no real interest in solving this issue. You may keep an eye upon that and in the case you get reported by users about your site's performance, it could be worth to look for a more powerful webhoster.

[jassdoit]

I will ask them again.

It is so strange. Because I dont think my html code and pictures will cause that much slow loading difference. And I use http://host-tracker.com/check_res_ajx/983331-0/share/ to check, my speed is 71sec which huge delay in many area.

Thanks anyway.
ERIC