FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

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FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by jhollender » Thu Apr 10, 2014 9:36 am

Does anyone know of a way to add a filtered search to a store? I'm looking for something similar to: http://www.rei.com/c/hiking-backpacks where you can select categories, features, colors, etc. to filter your search. Once selected, each "filter" should also be able to be cleared.

This seems like a staple of eCommerce stores now, but I can't figure out how to build it in AbleCommerce. Any help is appreciated.

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Re: Is there a filtered search available?

Post by Falala » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:47 am

Hi, We are in the process of implementing a third party filter/search. It will cost us about $250 per month, plus a $300 setup fee. It may seem pricey, but I'm confident we will more than make up for it in conversions. I love ablecommerce, it's the best cart software i've ever worked with. However, I don't think the the search/filter feature is up to 2014 standards. That being said, I would choose AC over any other cart because it's other features/intuitive interface make up for it. Let me know if you want any specifics. There's also an AC plug in by pluggables.com that works really well.

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Re: Is there a filtered search available?

Post by Katie » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:58 pm

I don't think we have too much to worry about with the patent dispute. I went ahead and added this as a feature request.

Please vote here: http://ablecommerce.uservoice.com/forum ... ch-control

And if you have any details to provide on implementation, please let us know your thoughts. Hopefully we can add this soon, and save you from spending $250/mo. - ouch!
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Re: Is there a filtered search available?

Post by AnySupport » Mon Jun 02, 2014 4:19 pm

I have added my max allowed votes to this suggestion. (And I had never seen that board, so I'll have to train myself to keep tabs on it)

The lack of this commonplace functionality still remains one of the major (and one of the most public) drawbacks of the platform.
My client is working on implementing a complicated system and the debate constantly goes back and forth between whether or not to use Merchant Templates to not lose an existing functionality of the current website that lets the visitor filter products by characteristics desired.

While Product Templates with merchant fields would much more clearly display product aspects for customers such as product color, materials, locations, etc, and would allow that data to be standardized and saved with the product, the fact that none of those fields are searchable means having to duplicate all the data in a description box or skip the Merchant field/Product Template and deal with copy/paste of HTML snippets followed by manual edits every time, which greatly increases the potential for user data errors.

AbleCommerce is providing so much more functionality to the business than they currently have, but losing their product finder tool is going to be a significant step backward from any returning customer's perspective. Due to existing costs of the project's customization, the client has already had to turn down upfront customizing of multiple hundreds of dollars to implement this.

The ability to use these Merchant Fields just like the standard AbleCommerce fields (Vendor/Brand) and provide a search functionality that is considered commonplace nowadays, would be a massively significant competitive benefit for all AbleCommerce based merchants.

May the developers include this as soon as they are able!
Thank you!

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Re: Is there a filtered search available?

Post by Shopping Cart Admin » Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:11 pm

Hello,

We're looking for feedback on this should be implemented, so please give us your thoughts!

There are automatic attributes possible, such by brand and price which are already available in the database and manually assigning the products to filtered criteria.
Thanks for your support

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by Katie » Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:05 pm

We committed to adding a new Shop By (Filter) feature in the next version. I'll go over some of the ideas that we've come up with so far, but I'd like to get your thoughts as well.

IDEA #1 - Plugables implemented this feature for AC7 by using the Product Templates. They chose it because it was easy to fit the feature into the application without modifying schema. The query will be complicated and we're not sure about performance. How practical is the idea of using product templates for this feature? Simply, with the Plugables implementation, they only filter products that belong to a specific product template. Then they further narrow results depending upon what values are provided for template field for every product. If we adapt a similar approach, we will have to tell the ShopBy control which product template to use for criteria.

IDEA #2 - If we are looking for performance and full grip on flexibility, maybe we should add new tables to support the feature. For example, we can have tables like Attributes, AttributeChoices and ProductAttributes. This setup will be more like option, option choices and product options but not specific to product. Attributes will be shared among products, for example, you will only create Color attribute once and then you will be able to select color for every product.

IDEA #3 - Go for a simple approach and use existing categories. A merchant can create as many Shop By categories as needed and assign products to them like they do now. We can add a new category option that tells us whether to only show the category in the Shop By control and/or as a Category page. You can create categories like Size, Style, Color, Price etc that would only be used in the Shop By control and never displayed as actual categories within the store.

IDEA #4 - Option templates. I know that we've had requests to have option templates, which is a great idea except for the fact that it would be difficult to implement with respect to upgrades. Options may also be a good way to filter products, except that not all products have options and currently they are not consolidated into a few single options but there could be thousands depending on the store.

Also, keep in mind that we already have the basics implemented with the Product Finder (search.aspx) page by showing a Narrow by Category, Narrow by Manufacturer, and Narrow by Keyword.

I'm having a hard time getting my head around this one, and it would be great if we can brainstorm together 8)

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and comments!

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by ChipWV » Sun Jun 15, 2014 7:03 am

I like option #2.

First, all pages should be optimized for performance first, user experience second. I say this because if the page is too slow to load, the customer will not wait around to have a good experience.

A dedicated table would be easier to update the data with non-Ablecommerce tools/code from an administration point of view. It's not a big deal if you have 20 products, but if you have 2,000 or 20,000 it's a big deal.

I was looking at using the Plugables solution, it seemed to work well on the example site. As long as the performance is good in Gold, I think this is a good option too, as people that already have established templates won't have to recreate the wheel.

That's my $0.02

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by Katie » Sun Jun 15, 2014 7:48 am

Thanks for your feedback Chip. We should first test the Plugables solution with several thousand products and see if there are any performance issues. If yes, then option #1 will be off the table.
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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by jmestep » Mon Jun 16, 2014 4:24 am

We have a product ranking plugin that allows you to change the order of products(like for by quantity sold,by average review, etc) but it doesn't have filtering. I used a separate table for this for performance reasons and ease of entering data.
I think that #2 would be better for performance and ease of editing if you have some kind of batch edit process for the attributes. Editing template values for a product is cumbersome currently.
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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AnySupport » Mon Jun 16, 2014 8:38 am

I feel very strongly about this feature, but I apologize if I don't word myself clearly here. If I've muddled anything up, please just let me know what you need clarified and I'll try again!
Katie wrote:IDEA #1 - Plugables implemented this feature for AC7 by using the Product Templates. They chose it because it was easy to fit the feature into the application without modifying schema. The query will be complicated and we're not sure about performance. How practical is the idea of using product templates for this feature? Simply, with the Plugables implementation, they only filter products that belong to a specific product template. Then they further narrow results depending upon what values are provided for template field for every product. If we adapt a similar approach, we will have to tell the ShopBy control which product template to use for criteria.
I have not seen the Plugables in action as we are building a site in Gold and the shopping cart screenshot only gives an impression of how it might work. I do like the idea of using Product Templates, since they could already have been built with product details for sites...
http://www.martyshoes.com/Browse.aspx?c=3 This is a custom done for another site (not by me) and was similar to what my client had been considering. This was built off of existing Product templates, though I don't know the approach or configuration details. The compact display on some fields was appealing, but I wouldn't expect that to make the cut for standard implementation. Merely an observation of another way to present the data without producing long scrolling columns.

The problem however of Product Templates is still that the values do not appear in Site Searches (from the search box, separate from this filtered search tool).
So while the filtered search would offset that somewhat, if it is built off of Product Templates and the website wants those same values to be found if someone tries direct searching, will they still have to maintain dual entries of the information (in Search Keywords along with Product Templates).
Katie wrote: IDEA #2 - If we are looking for performance and full grip on flexibility, maybe we should add new tables to support the feature. For example, we can have tables like Attributes, AttributeChoices and ProductAttributes. This setup will be more like option, option choices and product options but not specific to product. Attributes will be shared among products, for example, you will only create Color attribute once and then you will be able to select color for every product.
I also like this idea, but still worry about having to rebuild data, or maintaining multiple sets of identical data.
In this case, it sounds like the new tables could be included in the Site Search functionality...
AND could possibly programmatically incorporate existing Product Variant criteria like size/width/color,
but then the display integration of the Product Page becomes the unknown factor.
  • Where would these fields appear on the product page?
  • Right now, product templates allow clear bulleted listing of product specs and it is fairly easy to customize the page to move the Product Template display to the More Details Section. However, in IDEA #2's approach, if the new tables are built into the products, will the values still display on the individual pages as well?
  • Will display be suppressible on a field by field level (whether empty or if filled)? There could easily be filterable/searchable fields that become redundant if forced to display on the Product page itself.
Katie wrote:IDEA #3 - Go for a simple approach and use existing categories. A merchant can create as many Shop By categories as needed and assign products to them like they do now. We can add a new category option that tells us whether to only show the category in the Shop By control and/or as a Category page. You can create categories like Size, Style, Color, Price etc that would only be used in the Shop By control and never displayed as actual categories within the store.
This looks like it would cover the searchability problem I think, but leave the product display issue back on Product Templates as well as the Variant options for aspects like Size/Width so actually it'd be tripling repetitive data maintenance.
Katie wrote:IDEA #4 - Option templates. I know that we've had requests to have option templates, which is a great idea except for the fact that it would be difficult to implement with respect to upgrades. Options may also be a good way to filter products, except that not all products have options and currently they are not consolidated into a few single options but there could be thousands depending on the store.

Also, keep in mind that we already have the basics implemented with the Product Finder (search.aspx) page by showing a Narrow by Category, Narrow by Manufacturer, and Narrow by Keyword.
Honestly, I'm not aware of what an "option template" might be. I'm guessing a way of standardizing Variant? (Like applying a Size & Width or Size & Color Variant Pair with pre-defined values to multiple products at once?) If so, I can definitely see the appeal, particularly for new site building. And, as you can tell, I'm a very strong believer in standardizing values to reduce repetitive or redundant data entry which can waste time and leave a large opportunity for mismatches or typos. However, since I'm not sure exactly what the requests have been, I'm not clear on the hurdles of implementation. So.. I guess I'd need more information here.

Thank you very much for getting this moved so quickly into the planned releases! I hope I can help!

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by ForumsAdmin » Tue Jun 17, 2014 3:40 am

IDEA #4 - Option templates.
Honestly, I'm not aware of what an "option template" might be.
This one actually makes a lot of sense. Call them Option Templates or Shared Options or whatever. Basically you define set of common options that can be applied to many products.

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AnySupport » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:41 am

OK then I can see how those would be a strong tool for the system, but I'm not sure if that fits into the filtered search tool functonality (...unless they would also incorporate/merge/replace the current functionality of variants and some usages of product templates...?)

Overall:
Not having the experience to account for performance factors on this platform -obviously high priority-,
I see these as the (other) primary considerations from the angle of end user implementation:
  • Primary Purpose, of course, to give AbleC clients the filtering functionality that is very commonplace on many other major websites, to give a visible competitive edge (without requiring hiring custom development)
  • Reducing/removing the need for repetitive or redundant manual entry
    • current practices for product search box inclusion
    • better ability for reporting, vs strictly description box text entries (potentially easier querying than current variant & product template data?)
  • Standardizing specs/descriptor entries for products
    (reduce opportunity for typos or mismatched options in multiple spots)
  • Display of entries used for filters on product pages
    • ability to impact location - through the system or with hopefully relatively simple customizations
    • ability to suppress individual values - since filters might be a purchase option or a product template or an internal value, otherwise given in descriptive text?
It cannot be assumed that all search filter values will be available selections on products. (Sizes, Colors: likely yes. Specs, characteristics, materials: no)


Option Templates, if meant to standardize the population of just product templates, also still excludes those entries from search box functionality. (So if IDEA 4 is implemented for filters, the website would need to duplicate that data in search keywords or description boxes to allow the same results when the search box is used.)

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AbleMods » Wed Jun 18, 2014 5:10 am

Interesting challenge...

The problem with using Product Templates is existing sites already use them in a variety of ways. There's no way to specify that specific merchant attributes be included (or excluded) from the ShopBy search functionality. Some clients may not want their merchant-side product template fields as choices in a ShopBy filter.

So to leverage product templates, you would need to add a "Searchable" bool to the template field. That adds complexity to the queries, albeit not much.

Initially I liked the idea of separate tables for "Attributes". It's logically separate and distinct from all other aspects of Able. Makes it easier to visualize the behavior. But it feels...redundant. We can literally do everything now using product templates, we just lack a way to discriminate the 'searchables' and a front-end control to render it in a useful way (ShopBy).

My vote is to add a Searchable flag to product template fields. Adapt the plugables control to Gold. A few minor UI and schema changes and you're done.

Throw in a bulk assign-product-template feature, something that lets you assign (or unassign) a specific product template to all products in specific categories.

Still though, I can see some logic in either route.
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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by Katie » Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:20 am

Throw in a bulk assign-product-template feature, something that lets you assign (or unassign) a specific product template to all products in specific categories.
This feature already exists for product templates (and most other types of things that can/should be bulk-assigned). Do you remember seeing the linked number of products in the grid where we show the product templates? Just click that and you should have a full blown product search form to do assignments en masse.

I'm starting to like the idea of using product templates...but I still wonder about performance in a large store. I was at Lowes.com yesterday and their results refinement is crazy huge, which made me think that this feature might be better if we mimic the idea of product templates, but go with Option #2. Anyway, we're still at the drawing board, so please keep the comments coming!

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AnySupport » Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:52 am

If you went with Option 2, to just address/avoid the redundancy of the data itself, maybe a tool could be incorporated to allow migration of fields and values from existing Product Templates into the Attributes table for setups only.
  • Select existing template
  • check off fields within the template to import as Attributes
  • (possibly displaying the existing field names already in Attributes to prevent duplication?)
(Field Value specific alterations would be handled in the Attribute maintenance pages. No product assignment or value assignments here. Just building the structure to ease adoption and reduce redundancy or manual data entry errors.)

After field selection, but before applying:
  • Option 1: For products with values already assigned to the Product template with existing values, when the attribute fields are created, they are also pre-populated for those products only.
  • Option 1b: If 1 is chosen, choice to clear values from the migrated Product Template field.
  • Option 1c -or 2: possibly dependent on 1 chosen or an independant option?,
    choice to delete the field from the Product Template.
Just another thought...

But I do also like the ability to make Product Template fields (not template level, field level) searchable by the general box and then within the filter functionality.

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by jmestep » Thu Jun 19, 2014 4:09 am

Katie, this suggestion might help you to kill two birds with one stone. On a lot of sites, we are having to add product custom fields or fields in a new table because of some customizations. What about if you add something like 8 new fields in the products table and make them available for search filtering plus other uses. For example, I'm working on a site now that has two additional fields for the product for special functions. Over and over, we have needed extra fields. You could have a configuration manager some where that you can define a friendly name for the field and an option of whether to use it for a search filtering field. That way different merchants can do different things. Since it is a field in the products table, the performance would be good. It could also be edited in the product batch edit and via the data import routine.
Here is a screenshot of what I have done for our product ranking/sorting plugin. It adds additional entries to the sorting dropdown on the category page and merchant can configure whether to use the field or not and what name to display for it.
2014-06-19_7-35-59.jpg
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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AnySupport » Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:20 am

Was an approach ever decided here or is it still being evaluated? are there any more ideas or information we might be able to provide perspective on? Thank you very much!

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by mazhar » Thu Aug 14, 2014 8:56 am

We are hoping to have a shop by navigation by utilizing product templates. That when applied on a category will allow you to filter depending about input field choices. For example say a navigation to select by color will need to create a template with input field color having choices say Red, Green and Blue. The shop by listing will allow customers to choose color and limit products having specific color value.

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by mdahle » Wed Sep 10, 2014 12:18 pm

Is this going to be available in R9? And as for assigning attributes to specific products within categories, can we do a .csv upload? (and if so - can I get a template so I can get started creating my .csv?)

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AnySupport » Wed Sep 10, 2014 2:24 pm

This may be similar to the previous question ultimately, but could you clarify the method a little more?

When referring to a solution using "product templates" applied to categories,
does this mean having to creating a new product template with Merchant fields (or something similarly 'hidden' like that)
that recreates all existing Options/Variants of all products within one or more categories for the ability to filter by them?

Will there be a tool to help create this template from existing categories and products?
Or will it programatically scoop options/variants/merchant fields from products & existing templates within the category? (perhaps at the time of the update, if not ongoing)
or will it all need to be created manually?

And, yes, is there any possible forecast in the timing of this (understood it'd be with more than a grain of salt)?

Thank you very very much!

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by Katie » Thu Sep 11, 2014 6:19 am

I can say that this feature will be available in R9, which is right around the corner. We are working on the second round of final QA testing now.

After a lot of discussion, we decided to go with a simple approach of adding a ShopBy variable to the existing product templates fields for merchant. We considered trying to use variants, but for this first iteration, it was decided to start with only the existing merchant fields. After we get some feedback, we can always improve upon the feature.

So, basically it should be very easy to implement. If you are already using merchant fields, then you can check a box to make them also available as 'Shop By' choices. We then make use of the existing search page (Product Finder) which already allows the customer to filter by category and manufacturer/brand. Any Shop By attributes will instantly appear here without having to make a special display page. We realize that in a very large catalog, that performance may be in issue, so you can disable the feature by setting the parameter on the control (CategorySearchSidebar) and instead use this control on specific category pages...much like the giant retailers won't show the Shop by filters until you get into a specific category.

I don't think it will be possible to make this work with the existing CSV product update/import because the product templates themselves have a one to many relationship to their attributes. We are considering some kind of batch update where merchants can select the product template and pick choices from a single page, but for now, you will be able to assign the templates to many products at once through a product management/assignment page.
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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AnySupport » Thu Sep 11, 2014 7:01 am

Thank you for this answer, Katie! It greatly helps me figure out how to start laying the groundwork for this now, while we're still building our platform, even though we may not have R9 immediately. (We just upgraded to R7 earlier in development and didn't expect R8 so quickly. Enough changes had been made already that retrofitting it all again was decided to be postponed, particularly knowing this might be arriving in R9, but not knowing when or how.)


I just have two questions on how you might advise preparing for this enhancement for our situation, which I doubt is unique. We are selling apparel and shoes. We definitely have product template fields that we'd want to use within a search filter, for descriptors like material used, etc. But the ability to filter products for size/width/lengths etc is just as important.
  • It sounds like we could build a product template of merchant fields that mimic/include all the variant options, and would just have to reapply the values across all products once. Then customizing the product page to not display that particular product template.
    Does that seem like a correct theory of approach?
  • If the above works, then:
    Could one also choose to make a product template specifically for the ShopBy fields,
    customizing it to be hidden, to include the public merchant field values
    along with the duplicated option/variant values
    (yes, meaning duplicate data entry for now- undesirable, I know)
    to impose a separate order for ShopBy fields, which may not match how they would appear on a product page, via multiple separate product templates?
It seems like if one or both of these are reasonable, then it would be possible to create a script or two that go through products for variants and merchant field values to assign them into one or two new Product Templates at the time of implementation. But of course that'd have to be investigated after it's released.

Thank you!

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by Katie » Thu Sep 11, 2014 8:33 am

Remember that the merchant fields only display on the admin side, so customization for the product display is not necessary. Only when you enable the ShopBy attribute for the product template will it appear in the Product Finder's CategorySearchSidebar control. You can absolutely create a product template for only ShopBy use.

I hope this answers your question. It may not be the perfect solution for every merchant, but it works well.
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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by AnySupport » Fri Sep 12, 2014 8:06 am

Oh, hah! Then I just got it backwards, since we must have custom to display a product template under an "Additional Information" tab, as a way to standardize the presentation of descriptors and materials etc, and allow for potential future reporting abilities.

So we'd just have to adjust that custom to not apply to a template created just for the other search fields (if that's the approach pursued).

Thank you very much! This is hugely helpful!

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Re: FEEDBACK WANTED:Is a filtered (Faceted) search available?

Post by Odettes » Wed Jan 14, 2015 3:51 am

I'm missing price range as a filter option.
Will it be included in the next release?
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