Sitecore Search Implementation Services

Finding stuff on your site, shouldn't be difficult

Sitecore search made easy

If you have a complex site that features hundreds of people, thousands of products, or tons and tons of white papers and articles, then search is one of the most important website experiences you should invest in.

In situations like this, if you skimp on search, prospects will quickly become frustrated and go elsewhere. But with a helpful and intuitive search experience, prospects will find what they need, make a purchase, and keep coming back for more.

Let our trusted Sitecore Implementation team help you make your search experience a key differentiator and a competitive advantage. Our goal is to make your search experience so intuitive, helpful, and convenient that people choose you instead of your competitors. And they become loyal lifetime customers because you took the time to create a buying experience that shows how much you care.

Before we begin any search implementation at Engagency, we have to do a bit of searching ourselves—starting with you and your audience. We’ll work with you to understand what’s important to you and your visitors to provide a meaningful search experience.

At the forefront of a good search experience is analysis—we benchmark your current search experience against both your competitors and common search best practices. We've developed a system to evaluate and score your current search experience to provide insight into your strengths and weaknesses.

Next, we analyze your data. What are your current users searching for, either on your site or on Google? How do search queries map to what you want your audience to find? What data are you storing on your content that is useful? What are you missing? What are the key relationships between content on your site, such as products and solutions or products and related articles? Are your keywords in-line with how your customers think about what you have to offer? If not, how can we use technology to bridge that gap?

After looking at what content and data we have to work with, we focus on your goals. What are you ultimately trying to lead your customers toward? Do you have different audiences and what are the differences in their needs? For example, are you trying to provide a great experience for technical people AND to folks who can barely use their iPhone? We'll help you figure out how both can be accommodated.

Based on the combination of known data and your goals, we'll craft a recommendation that covers key areas such as user experience, type-ahead strategies, search content categorizations, filtering and faceting, promoted content, natural language searching, and more. This will be presented and we'll have a conversation around priorities to hone in on what is best for you.

Once we have a clear sense of what we're building, we'll make a recommendation on the search technology to use. With Sitecore, popular choices include Solr and Coveo.

With the search technology chosen, we'll create a detailed Search Functional Specification which outlines how search will be built—from indexing data, to search weighting and relevance, to look and feel. This will also outline the content needed from you and how you'll put this content into Sitecore.

Finally, we build the search functionality based on a set of 10-15 "training" items which help us analyze the algorithms at work. Once these are working well, search is tested against a larger set of test cases, typically including about 100 items.

Upon completion, you'll have a search function on your site that is driving your users to the content most relevant to them and most beneficial to you.

Imagine how you want your site search to look and feel

Our team of UX experts will work with you and your team to understand the role search plays on your site. During this discovery phase, we focus on the design of your search. Using our 50-point design checklist, we’ll help you brainstorm how your search box should look (on mobile and desktop), what type of type-ahead strategy to use, how the search results will appear, what level of complexity in terms of filters and facets you should apply, and what role promoted content will play in your search experience.

Determine which search features you need

Is faceted, type-ahead, or natural language search best for your users? Not sure? No worries; our experts will help you figure it out during our search discovery. We’ll recommend the best search features for your Sitecore site, based on the type of content you’ll be making searchable, as well as the format and functionality your audience expects.

Which search software should you use for Sitecore?

The top search solutions for Sitecore are Solr search and Coveo. Once we’ve determined the design and technical specs for your Sitecore search, we’ll recommend the optimal software solution for you, taking your current Sitecore environment and budget into account.