All about
Doofinder is a plug and play on-site search engine that offers major improvements over your out of the box (Shopify or other platform) search functionality. There really isn’t a lot that can go wrong with your installation of this tool, it will automatically supercharge your existing search basically right after installing. And they offer a free 30 day trial so you can really see what it can do for you.
When a user searches, they are naturally more likely to convert. But if they have a “bad” search experience, you’re essentially lowering the conversion rate of your most likely to convert users, which is quite a serious problem. This is why having great search functionality becomes important very quickly for merchants. I’d argue right around the 1,000 searches/month mark (it can be lower for high SKU businesses, or high average order value type businesses), which you can look up in your Google Analytics by going to Behavior -> Site Search -> Overview.
Another big problem that Doofinder, and most on-site search tools, will solve is what’s known as the “no results” page. When a user searches and doesn’t get any results, that is a dead end and can lead to the user leaving the site, a huge problem. To reduce this risk, you want to ensure you attempt to find related results, other things the user might like, and in the long-term you may even want to source products based on high volume “no results” searches on your site.
You will be sent weekly reports of search volume, keywords, and results, and from there you can find opportunities to improve the search functionality, such as adding synonyms, or tweaking your “no results” page to return hot selling, or new products, or perhaps products you want to clear out of your warehouse.
You also have the ability to override results, which can be used to put, say, your high profit products, in front of the products the user is searching for. This isn’t always recommended because the search algorithm is automatically finding the top converting products and showing those results first, so you are sort of at-risk for lowering your conversion rate, but perhaps you have a different agenda that makes that OK.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
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Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
The coolest thing about Doofinder is the ability to help the algorithm prioritize your products based on the factors you consider important. For example, do you want to optimize for revenue, profit margin, or new customers? By feeding into their system the right data, you can change how the algorithm is optimizing. So perhaps this month you want to go for more customers, but next month you want to optimize for profitability. No problem.
The power of the algorithm behind their search tool is another really important factor. They are personalizing results based on not just click behavior or mouse tracking (called eye tracking sometimes, but it's not your actual eyes they track) but also on products, brands, price ranges, colors, sizes, and many other personalization factors.
This does come at a cost of $99/month, but the benefit is that even smaller stores can add what they call “Version AI” personalization to the site, without having to upgrade tiers to say a Pro or Enterprise plan (like other on-site search tools).
Your main goal with installing an on-site search tool is to increase your conversion rate (and average order value - AOV) of the searches on your store. You should see more revenue from search, higher average order value, and a higher conversion rate, and comparing that to the numbers prior to installing a search tool will give you a strong understanding of the lift that an on-site search tool gives you.
You’ll want someone in marketing who is intimately involved with your products and sales strategies to setup this tool. Given that you can optimize your searches based on volume, keywords, and results as well as override results to accommodate another agenda, it is important to understand how/when to do these things.
Doofinder is plug and play and will automatically supercharge your existing search basically right after installing, but as with most tools, the more time you invest, the more you will get out of it.
You’re going to want a tool like Doofinder when your users rely on on-site search to complete their purchase, when you have high on-site search volume, and/or when you have a very high SKU count. Typically a tool like this will be profitable right around 1,000 searches per month or more.
And with their free 30 day trial, there is no reason not to take it for a spin!