Why search affects sales
In an e-commerce industry publication , data from a UK digital commerce agency showed that visitors who used site search converted in 4.63% of cases. The average site-wide conversion rate was 2.77%. That is roughly 1.8 times higher.
In a Google Cloud study on online retail search , 53% of shoppers said they leave for another store if they cannot find the product through search. After a successful search, 92% buy the item they found, and 78% add at least one more item to the order.
Baymard Institute , a UX research company for e-commerce sites, notes that many stores handle real customer search queries poorly: typos, abbreviations, colors, sizes, brands, categories, and alternative product names.
What is wrong with the default CS-Cart search
CS-Cart documentation states that the default quick search looks for an exact phrase. This can be changed, but the underlying logic still remains limited: the search works within the specified fields and does not become a full search engine.
Suggestions help customers reach the product faster
The customer starts typing and immediately sees relevant products. They do not need to press Enter every time, wait for a results page, and sift through empty results.
What Smart Search can do
Meilisearch supports typo-tolerant search. If the customer types televisr or samsng , the search can still show relevant products.
The search can find products by the beginning of a word. That is useful when a person types only part of a query and expects a suggestion.
Smart Search can find products by a full or partial SKU and quickly suggest relevant items. This is especially important for B2B stores, where customers often search for specific parts, consumables, or spare parts by SKU.
You can include products, categories, brands, features, vendors, pages, and other data in search. That matters for large catalogs and marketplaces.
The search indexes product data and can take into account updates to price, availability, name, features, and other fields.
Meilisearch supports filtering, sorting, and facets. That lets you build results with filters by price, brand, category, features, and other parameters.
The appearance of the search block can be adapted to the store: which data to show, how many results to display, and how to style suggestions.
Need to improve search as quickly as possible?
Analytics helps improve the catalog
Search statistics quickly show where the catalog has gaps.
If there are queries but no clicks, the results may not be convincing. If there are clicks but no carts, the problem may be in the product page, the price, availability, or the offer itself. Search becomes an entry point for catalog analysis.
If customers frequently search for specific phrases, you can add them to search keywords, titles, descriptions, features, or search settings. Over time, the results become more accurate for real demand.
Built on Meilisearch technology
Meilisearch is a good fit for fast storefront search in an online store. It is designed for typing-as-you-search behavior, supports typos, prefix search, filters, sorting, and relevance tuning.
Compared with Elasticsearch, Meilisearch is easier to implement and configure for storefront search. Elasticsearch is powerful, but it usually requires more resources and more setup. For the task “show the customer a suitable product quickly in the search bar,” Meilisearch is usually more practical.
Meilisearch documentation: Full text search overview .
Who needs the add-on
The add-on is especially useful if:
the store has a large catalog;
there are brands, categories, features, and sizes;
customers often search from a phone;
typos appear frequently in search queries;
the store runs on CS-Cart Multi-Vendor;
you need to understand what customers are actually searching for;
some important data is stored in product features rather than in the product name.
Frequently asked questions
For fast search in CS-Cart, you can use a separate search add-on based on Meilisearch. This kind of search shows products while the user is typing, works faster than the default search results, and helps customers get to the right product more quickly.
The default CS-Cart search often requires a more exact match. Smart Search is more flexible: it handles typos, partial words, SKUs, brands, categories, features, and other catalog data.
A common reason is that customers search in a way that does not exactly match how the product is stored in the admin panel. For example, they may misspell a word or search by color, size, brand, or feature, and that data may not be part of the default search.
Yes. Smart Search can find products by a full or partial SKU. This is especially useful for B2B stores, spare parts catalogs, consumables, and products customers often search for by code.
Yes. You can include product name, SKU, brand, category, features, vendor, pages, and other catalog fields in search. This helps customers find products even when the exact word is not in the title.
Yes. Meilisearch supports typo-tolerant and partial-word search. If a customer types a query with an error, such as televisr or samsng , the search can still show relevant products.
For storefront search in an online store, Meilisearch is often more practical: it is easier to implement, easier to configure, and well suited for fast autocomplete. Elasticsearch is more powerful, but it usually requires more resources, setup, and ongoing maintenance.
Yes. The add-on can be used not only in regular CS-Cart stores, but also in marketplaces based on CS-Cart Multi-Vendor. If needed, search can be configured with vendor awareness and large-catalog behavior in mind.
Analytics shows what customers are searching for, which queries produce no clicks, where empty results appear, and which searches lead to carts or orders. This helps improve the catalog, product names, features, and search settings.
Fast search is especially useful for stores with a large catalog, brands, features, sizes, SKUs, and frequent mobile searches. The more complex the catalog, the more important it is that customers can quickly find the right product.
You need SSH access to the store server, root or sudo access, and a Linux server with curl and openssl. The add-on includes an automatic SSH install command that can be run by you or passed to the hosting support team.
The Smart Search add-on for CS-Cart costs $117. It is a one-time payment. Add-on support is provided for 30 days after purchase.