Overview

SearchAssist enables you to design search experiences for your customer or employee. You can customize their search experience both in the user-engagement phase when entering queries and in the results display phase. You can design how your customers or employees  can experience the search, either from the traditional search bar from the top-down or the conversational UI from the bottom-up.  End-users can see the results in views selected by you as per business requirements.

Customize the overall search experience through:

• The Search Interface,  a user interface used by the search users to enter their queries. Refer Search Experience. Refer How to Customize Search Experience.
• Result Templates allow you to decide how the individual search results are formatted and displayed in a results interface. Refer Results Templates. Refer How to Customize Results Views.

Customize Search Experience 

You can customize the search interface in three different aspects:

1. Customize Experience: You can choose the position of the search bar, this choice would in turn  decide how the display in which the results are presented to the user.
   • Search Bar  will position the Search Bar at the top of the window. This approach is used in e-commerce websites where search results are displayed from top to bottom in the search bar.
     As the user types a query, the live search results are displayed as a dropdown list and the full page results are given on the page itself. The user can either select an option from the live search dropdown list or browse through the full results page. 
   • Assistant  will position the Search Bar at the bottom of the chat window. This approach is generally used in banking and insurance websites where you want a virtual assistant to help perform actions like paying bills, etc. at the top or bottom of the chat window. In this case, the live search results are displayed as the user types the query and the conversational search results are displayed in the chat window. Users can select an option from the live search list or browse the options given in the conversational search results. Apart from this, the user will be presented with an option to view the full page results, to see the entire search results on a slide-out page.
2. Customize with Search Widget:  includes customization of the search bar. These include: 
   • Placeholder Text inside the search bar, text color 
   • Search bar border color, search Icon 
   • Search Button customization 
3. Customize Interactions: The user experience with the search interface can be improved by customizing various interactions.
   • Greeting message is displayed on the launch of the search bar, a total of 60 characters allowed and you can set the color of the text. Enter your custom Greeting here, apply desired text and background colors. 
   • Show Searches option can be enabled for the user to see their previous queries. These queries pop up as cards in the search window as soon as the user selects the search bar. Options are to display either frequent searches or recent search displays.

• Auto-complete option can be enabled to save the user time and effort by predicting the rest of the word as they are typing a query.
• Query Suggestion reduces the user’s time to search a query by providing suggestions. These suggestions would help users to enter long queries or select a query as they type. You can set the number of suggestions to be displayed from 0-3 for bottom-up experience, from 0-5 for a top-down experience. When used along with Live Search Results, the live search results appear at the background of the query suggestions and the user can scroll to browse the results.
• Live Search Results enhance the user’s search experience by showing the results while entering the query and allow the user to see search results without redirecting to the results page. You can set the number of results to be displayed from 0-5 for bottom-up experience, from 0-10 for a top-down experience. When used along with Query Suggestion, the live search results appear at the background of the query suggestions and the user can scroll to browse the results.

Results Templates 

SearchAssist allows you to customize the Result display layouts with the Templates and the way in which the results should be displayed in a more purposeful way.

You can configure the Result template for the following result types:

• Live Search displays the results as the user is typing the query.
• Conversational Search displays the results in the chatbot with a link to view the full page results. This option is available only for the bottom-up search experience.
• Full Page Results display the complete results, on the main page in case of top-down search experience or as a slide-out page when the user selects the option in case of bottom-up search experience.

SearchAssist offers the following off-the-shelf Templates ready for deployment:

1. List Template
2. List Template with Images
3. Grid Template
4. Carousel Template

 

Designing a search experience is an integral part of the SearchAssist application. You can customize the search experience and the way in which the results should be displayed to the search user so that the search users always see the results in a more meaningful way.

You can customize the overall search through:

• The Search Interface is a graphical user interface used by the search users to pose their queries. For more information, refer to Search Interface.
• Result Templates decide the individual search results format in a search interface. For more information, refer to Results Templates.

To access the Search Experience, follow the below steps:

1. Click the Indices tab on the top.
2. On the left pane, you can find the Search Experience section.