Hi
I am searching the Products tab in my public storefront as a customer would.
- I am in a different browser.
- I am logged out.
- It is a private window.
- The products I am searching for are "old" so I do not believe it is an indexing issue
Expected Behavior from a User POV
As a user, when I search using text, I expect to see all results that match the search text. The matches could be located anywhere in the product metadata, e.g., title, description, tags, my category, Zazzle department.
Issue - Search Terms Convert to a "Department" Filter Hiding Relevant Product
I notice that if I search on "magnet" the search converts to a "Department" filter
side note: not sure why it is labeled Category instead of Department once the filter is applied. It is confusing to have two drop-downs with the same name.
b - This filter yields incomplete results. It is only showing magnets from Kitchen Accessories. I expect to see Car Magnets as well because they are magnets.
The only way I can find them in products is to search "car magnet" I don't think a user would necessarily think to do this.
A similar example is searching on the term "card" only results from Greeting Cards are shown. I would also expect to see Business Cards here
Possible Improvement
1 - Show all matching results based purely on text
2 - If Filtering is important, Instead of filtering to a Single Department, provide the user with hyperlinks to each matching department, e.g.,
Magnets in "Kitchen Accessories"
Magnets in "Automotive Accessories" or "Car Magnets"
etc.
Thanks
Not that it helps Zazzle. But I did implement my own suggestion over at Snuggle Hamster Designs. In this example you can see that the search picked up on "magnet" in "heart magnet" and shows me all the product types that include that word. Here I clicked on "Magnetic Card" to narrow my search results:
