New features: Custom Search Bar, Design, Merchandising

We have been working tirelessly in the past few months to better our product and we are not planning on slowing down any time soon.

After countless hours of designing, developing, and coding, we are proud to announce our latest features: Custom Search Bar, Design and Merchandising. Let’s see what they are all about.

Custom Search Bar

With our Custom Search Bar, you can add your own search bar to your Shopify store or replace the existing one.

Adding a Custom Search Bar is easy. After installing and enabling Rapid Search, click on the Settings menu option and select Custom search bar.

In the Custom Search Bar editor, you will see the preview of your storefront. Move the cursor to the storefront preview and click on the element you would like the search bar to be placed next to.

‍

‍

After clicking, the search bar is placed next to the chosen element, but you can change the placement. If you want the search bar to be placed to the right of the cart icon, simply choose right here, and the search bar will appear there immediately.

‍

‍

You can further customize the search bar’s colors, size, and placeholder text. You can also set up whether you want to show it on desktop, mobile, or both.

Once you are satisfied with its placement and design, save your custom search bar by clicking on Save in the top right corner. Your changes will be published, and the search bar will appear in your storefront. Made a mistake? No problem, you can remove it any time by clicking on Remove custom search bar in the bottom left corner.

Design

The new Design settings give you more freedom to change the displayed colors of Rapid Search to better suit the style of your store. You can also make additional style changes using CSS.

Just open Settings and select Design and you can start customizing the color palette of the instant search results, the search results pages, the badges, and the colors of the sticky widget. You can use several formats, such as HEX, RGB, or a simple color palette.

‍

‍

Don’t forget to save your changes before you exit the menu!

Merchandising

One of the most beloved functions of Rapid Search is AI search: the app displays the most relevant/popular results on the top of the search. To make the most of the search app as a marketing tool, it is now possible to move products of your choice to the front or the back of the search suggestions and search results.

Let’s say you want to create a campaign for Christmas, where you promote your Santa-themed products. Now, you can create a custom promotion with Merchandising for the holidays.

To do that, create merchandising rules in the Settings / Merchandising menu of your Rapid Search admin.

First, click on the Add a new rule button. Then, you need to name your rule. As you can create more than one rule, choose a name for each to be able to distinguish between them.

‍

‍

Next, define the products. Name the products you wish having at the front or the back of the search, or choose tags, collection, or stock status for your promotions. To define products, simply select Browse products, and you can select the specific products from your own product list.

‍

‍

Now, you need to define the promotion. First, decide if you want the promotion based on match or keywords.

‍

Definitions  📚

‍

Match means that the chosen products would be promoted/demoted exactly when they would be returned as a result for the search term entered by the visitor (i.e. your chosen raincoat products would be promoted when a visitor searches for raincoat).

Keywords means that you add extra keywords; if these keywords are entered by the visitor then the chosen products would be promoted/demoted in search (i.e. you add the keyword “sporty”; in this case if the visitor searches for sporty raincoat then your chosen raincoat products would be promoted).

‍

‍

You can choose the promotion weight: you can either promote products to be at the front of the search suggestions and search results, or simply increasing their weighing in search 2x or 4x compared to other products. You can also have the products appear at the back of the search, or simply demote them, or in other words to give them a 0.5x weighing compared to other products.

Rules can be set either with no time limit or you may define a specific time range for them – this can be useful if you are running seasonal promotions.

‍

‍

Final words

We hope that you will find our latest features useful, and they will help you grow your business further. If you are enjoying Rapid Search, we would be really thankful if you could leave an honest review about it here.

Your feedbacks help us improve. Have a new feature idea? Why don’t you drop us an email here? We respond to all enquires and will continue upgrading our app with popular feature requests.

‍

‍