Personalized search guides for WordPress & WooCommerce

WordPress search : Ultimate Guide for 2024

WordPress is the most widely used CMS and single handedly powers 40% of the web. If you haven’t tried it already, it is intuitive, powerful and if you use one of many hosting providers out there, you can easily set up a working website in minutes. But once you made all of your content, how do you ensure that your users can find it. For that, you need a good site search. Many types of search exist : keyword search, AI search, even personalized search. WordPress provides one by default, but it is incredibly slow and ineffective. This guide will go over the benefits of a fast and relevant search and how you could implement third party search engines easily into any WordPress or Woocommerce

Integrate Woocommerce with Algolia

Algolia is the most popular cloud search & recommendations provider. You could want to integrate it into your Woocommerce or WordPress website. Why use Algolia ? Search Algolia provides search of all kinds : simple keyword search, AI/vector search & personalized search. Keyword search is available in the free tier. Keyword search works by matching the keywords in a search query to the ones present in the indexed items/documents. It can be simple and limited without any configuration but Algolia offers multiple features to fine-tune it. For keyword search, you could define synonyms which is useful for expert websites. For example, if you have a medical website, you could need to set “acute myocardial infarction” as a synonym for heart attack.

Recombee vs Algolia pricing

Algolia and Recombee both offer similar functionalities : search and recommendations. Which solution you should go for would depend on your use case : Overall Overall, Recombee offers a better price to performance ratio compared to Algolia. It’s free tier includes personalized search and recommendations with almost all features available (models optimized for general purposes, e-commerce, streaming, ads, etc…) and very generous usage limits (100 000 recommendation requests per month, etc…) which is more than enough for most (smaller) websites. Algolia also works very well (you can check out case studies for both Algolia and Recombee) but is a more costly solution, good for bigger websites. If you want to learn more about Recombee, you should check out our detailed review.

Integrate Recombee into Woocommerce website

Integrate Woocommerce with Recombee

Woocommerce is the #1 solution for e-commerce globally. This WordPress plugin provides a powerful and customizable platform for online businesses to sell their products and services. With its user-friendly interface and easy integration with various payment gateways, Woocommerce has become the go-to choice for many entrepreneurs. One of the key features of Woocommerce is its flexibility. It offers a wide range of extensions and themes that allow you to customize your store according to your specific needs. Whether you want to add new functionalities or enhance the design of your website, there is an extension or theme available for almost any requirement. One of these features you could consider adding is recommendations. Why equip Woocommerce with personalized search & recommendations? Woocommerce already offers users

Recombee Review : The most versatile AI recommender

Recombee is an AI-powered recommender that offers both recommendations & personalized search. Whether it’s recommending products, articles, or movies, Recombee leverages advanced algorithms and machine learning to deliver personalized recommendations & search that keep users engaged and satisfied. With its easy integration and customizable features, Recombee empowers businesses to optimize content discovery, increase user retention, and drive conversions effortlessly. Highly-performing recommendations Recombee prides itself in increasing conversion rates and in turn revenue tenfold. You can verify this by reading their case studies. Using the case studies, you can observe that Recombee improves website performance in most situations whether it is general purposes, e-commerce, streaming, news, etc… Here are the main types of recommendations : 1. Item recommendations

Top 5 Recommendation Plugins for Woocommerce & WordPress

Recommendations are an emerging technology today, often used in e-commerce or video streaming. If you wish to equip your WordPress or Woocommerce website with recommendations, there are quite a few plugins available. However, not all of them are created equal. Some may be limited in functionality, while others may lack compatibility with certain themes or other plugins. Here are the top 5 : 1. WPSolr WPSolr is a complete search and recommendations WordPress plugin that integrates countless search engines & recommenders into your WordPress website. Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, Opensearch, Weaviate, Algolia, Recombee, Google Retail are all compatible (check out our engine features comparison). It is versatile and can be used for multiple purposes : blog website, e-commerce website, news website,

Overview of different filtering algorithms (for personalization)

In the past, websites aimed to boost click-through and conversion rates by improving search features. Now, a new technology called recommender systems has emerged. These systems work subtly in the background, requiring little user interaction. They personalize recommendations, closely linking with personalized search to tailor the user experience. But how do these recommendation systems work ? They use algorithms to filter the results that will be returned to the user. These algorithms are : content-based filtering, collaborative filtering, hybrid filtering and knowledge-based filtering. Diagram explaining how collaborative filtering works Collaborative filtering We will start of with the most popular type of filtering algorithm today : collaborative filtering. Collaborative filtering makes use of machine learning to quickly filter (recommend) the most relevant items

Photo of a person looking through a magnifyer.

What is Retrieval-Augmented Recommendation (RAR)?

I bet that the name Retrieval-augmented recommendation reminds you of something. That’s right! It’s a similar process to RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) but with a twist. Instead of using a search engine to retrieve the items and then feeding them to a generative AI, you retrieve the items using a search engine and then re-rank them using a recommender (personalization). This way you get the best of both worlds : any search engine of your choice but with personalization. This is powerful since you can basically build your own personalized search. Why? At WPSolr (WordPress search and recommendations plugin), we came up with this new method of search because one of our clients needed a personalized vector (AI) search for their e-commerce website

What is personalization ?

Personalization has become impossible to ignore in today’s digital landscape, permeating various aspects of our online experiences. As consumers increasingly expect personalized experiences, businesses across industries are investing in personalization technology to enhance user engagement, drive conversions, and foster customer loyalty in today’s highly competitive digital market. What is personalization? Personalization can be used whenever content is delivered to the user. It works by tracking user events that trigger whenever the user interacts with elements of interest in the website (page views, added to cart, added to favourites, etc…). This data is then used to train a model that comprehensively learns about users, enabling it to provide personalized recommendations tailored to each individual’s interests. What are some uses of personalization

What is personalized search?

Search has evolved over the years, first starting with traditional keyword search, then moving on to Vector (AI) databases. But nowadays, a new type of search is being popularized : personalized search. As it’s name implies, this technique consists of personalizing the search (keyword or vector) using stored events (or interactions) for each user. It is closely related to the other popular personalization system called recommendations. What is personalization ? Personalization consists of customizing the search results based on the user’s preferences. This is done by collecting user events, that are triggered whenever the user interacts with or does an action on the website, and using this to tailor the search results to the user’s preferences and needs. The personalization model

Algolia’s impact on user engagement metrics

Introduction Algolia is a powerful search-as-a-service platform that has revolutionized the way websites and applications implement search functionality. Its impressive search capabilities combined with its developer-friendly API have made it a favorite among developers and businesses alike, and it has had a significant impact on user engagement metrics. User engagement metrics, such as average time on site, bounce rate, and conversion rate, are critical indicators of a website or application’s success. Algolia’s fast and accurate search results greatly enhance the user experience, leading to increased user engagement and ultimately improved metrics. Algolia’s Impact on User Engagement Metrics Algolia’s key features, such as instant search results, typo tolerance, and relevance ranking, contribute to higher user engagement on websites and applications. Let’s take a closer look at

Using Weaviate to personalize the shopping experience in WooCommerce

Introduction In today’s ultra-competitive e-commerce landscape, delivering personalized shopping experiences to customers is crucial for success. Personalization allows online retailers to tailor their offerings to individual preferences, increasing customer satisfaction and driving conversions. One powerful tool that can help achieve this is Weaviate, an open-source knowledge graph that acts as a vector search engine. By incorporating Weaviate into your WooCommerce store, you can harness the power of AI and machine learning to provide personalized product recommendations for each customer. Getting Started with Weaviate To begin personalizing the shopping experience in WooCommerce using Weaviate, you’ll first need to set up and configure Weaviate. Here’s a step-by-step guide: 1. Install Weaviate: You can download Weaviate from the official website and follow the installation instructions provided. 2. Set