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Featured ideas 🦄 are rare ideas you may not have seen before ;-)
💡 Ideas and tips
Indicate the number of matching results in page heading 🔎
This simple feature has been disappearing from search results pages! Showing the number of results helps customers instantly gauge if they’ve gone too narrow or too broad in their search
🦄 Use dynamic filtering (thumbnails swap to match color or other attribute) 🔎
Many search applications today support dynamic results that will swap image thumbnails to match query context. For example, Searchspring’s “Dynamic imaging” is available on some tiered plans, and Algolia lets you code “Dynamic filtering rules” using their API.
👠 Marks and Spencer shows only red variant thumbnails when searching for “red heels”
😬 Contrast this with static results that hide variant context. A search for “purple blush” returns matches, but you must click each one to check the color
Consider tabbed results / promoted filters 🔎
Tabbed results are essentially promoted filters, which help customers further refine results without fiddling with filter menus.
Keep in mind that your UI design will influence how intuitive these tabs are (tabs typically get overlooked due to their subtlety).
👞 Cariuma’s Mens and Womens department filters are implemented as tabs
🏝️ River Island displays its tabs within its header, and also displays the number of results with each chip
Consider tabbed content results 🔎
If you publish articles, customer service information or other documents, consider showing them with catalog search.
Remember that they’re “secondary” results and should be styled as such, but certain UI patterns can make them “invisible.”
The North Face and ASDA place the Articles/Recipes tabs inline with results, versus Michaels’ pill-style toggle that may be harder to spot (below):
Set up custom merchandising for specific searches and themes 🧠 Don’t leave it up to your search tool to match thematic queries like “Christmas gift for Dad.” John Lewis set up custom merchandising rules to craft the experience — and these search URLs can be used as landing pages for email/social and your main header nav
Display related searches for deeper drilldown 🔎
This either comes out-of-the-box with your search app or it doesn’t — but you do have influence over how it’s presented on your front end.
These suggestions help users further refine their results without conducting a new search, and can remind them of important attributes they didn’t think of when searching
🫣 Cautions
Don’t show irrelevant products when “no results found” 🔎
Most sites today are afraid to serve null results, thinking it’s better to show something than nothing…
But showing longshot matches doesn’t help customers, rather it confuses them. There’s so many creative ways to handle No Results Found conditions that are more helpful to users. Don’t show sponsored banners or ads above search matches 🔎
It’s tempting to monetize your site search feature, but the whole point of search is relevance. Avoid sponsored listings that push down matches and irritate customers
Avoid showing category banners above search matches 🔎
While showing promoted subcategories above product list results works nicely within Category pages, they’re much less relevant and more distracting on search pages — especially in mobile context
Avoid using a search app that can’t match your Collection page UI (Shopify) 🔎
Many Shopify search apps are black boxes that can’t take your Collection customizations or replicate your look and feel, leading to inconsistent user experiences and missing functionality.
One workaround I’ve used with Shopify clients is to set up search redirects to relevant collection pages for frequently searched terms, to bypass the app experience.
An example of Collection page UI (above) vs search app experience (below):
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