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Increase Conversion Rates with Agentforce Commerce for B2C Search

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Configure search dictionaries to capture lost revenue from misspelled or alternate terms.
  • Guide customer traffic by using search redirects.
  • Implement sorting rules to prioritize high-value and in-stock inventory.
  • Design search refinements to help shoppers filter results quickly.
  • Analyze search reports to identify and fix conversion gaps.

Increase Sales Through Intentional Search Configuration

When a customer types a search query, they're telling you exactly what they want. Your job, as a storefront merchandiser, is to configure storefront search to deliver immediately on their request. If a search gives zero results or irrelevant products, the shopper leaves. Agentforce Commerce for B2C search gives you the tools to determine customer intent and show the right products in the right order.

Maximize Recall with Search Dictionaries

When a shopper searches for “trousers” but your catalog calls them “pants,” you potentially lose a sale. You can avoid these types of search discrepancies by using search dictionaries. A search dictionary organizes searchable attributes and manages relationships between terms.

The search dictionaries are an essential component of your storefront. How you manage search dictionaries defines how Agentforce Commerce for B2C search processes a search query and matches the query to products or content within your storefront.

Search Dictionaries

The Business Manager Search Dictionary module is where you manage search dictionaries. These sub-dictionaries include various components that enhance the search functionality and shopper experience.

  • Synonyms: Link terms to return identical results for words with the same or similar meaning, like “pants” and “trousers.”
  • Hypernyms and hyponyms: Handle specific versus general terms by using hypernyms. A hypernym is a broad category (Tops), and hyponyms are specific items (tunic, shirt, blouse). Searching for the hypernym tops returns all hyponyms. Searching for a specific hyponym, like tunic, returns only tunics. This structure exposes shoppers searching for general categories to the full breadth of the catalog.
  • Compound words: Customers define multiword terms differently (backpack vs. back pack). Configure the Compound Word dictionary to split or combine these terms automatically. Agentforce Commerce for B2C detects the split parts and treats them as separate search terms, finding the product regardless of the shopper’s spacing.
  • Suggestion phrases: Assist shoppers before they finish typing. As a user types, the storefront shows suggested terms, brands, and categories. Configure the Suggest Index to include specific phrases and exclude blocklisted terms. This guides the user toward valid search terms, reducing No Results pages.
  • Suggestion terms on blocklist: Improve the quality and relevance of suggestions. Its primary purpose prevents specific terms or phrases from inclusion in AI-generated suggestions. This makes sure that the recommendations align with organizational standards, compliance, or brand guidelines.
  • Common phrases: These are multiword search terms that appear in a specific order, providing more targeted results.
  • Keyword groups: Phrases that trigger specific merchandising objects, such as sorting rules.
  • Stop words: Ignored common words like “a,” “the,” “in,” that don’t improve search efficiency.
  • Category name exclusions: Excludes from indexing as keywords, certain category names.
  • Stemming exceptions: Defines how to stem or not stem certain words in a search or indexing process.

Control Traffic with Search Redirects

Sometimes a search query indicates a need for information rather than a product list. If a customer searches for “returns” or “shipping,” showing a list of shipping tape products causes frustration. Use Search Redirects to route customers to non-product content or specific landing pages based on specific keywords.

Match Types

Control exactly when redirects trigger by using match types.

  • Exact match: Enclose the term in brackets [mens shoes]. The redirect triggers only when the user types that exact sequence.
  • Phrase match: Enclose the term in quotes “mens shoes.” The redirect triggers if the query includes that phrase in that order, even with other words.
  • Broad match: Enter the term without punctuation. The redirect triggers if the query contains the words in any order.
  • Negative match: Prefix a term with a hyphen. This prevents the redirect if that specific word appears in the query.

Convert Intent into Revenue with Search Results

Search results and how they are shown on the page can determine whether a shopper buys or bounces. When a customer enters a query and returned items match their specific needs and availability expectations, they’re less likely to go to a competitor’s site.

Prioritize Available Inventory

Frustration peaks when a shopper selects a product only to discover it’s out of stock. Configure Availability Ranking to demote items with low stock automatically or push unavailable products to the end of the list. To prevent dead ends entirely, hide out-of-stock items completely by using the Show Orderable Products Only preference.

Show Exact Matches

If a customer searches for “red shirt,” showing a blue shirt image fails to meet their intent. Configure Variation Slicing to show the specific color or style variation that matches the query. This treats variations as distinct results, ensuring the product image aligns directly with the search keyword.

Control Strategic Placement

Algorithms handle most sorting, but specific campaigns require manual intervention. Assign Explicit Search Ranks (High, Medium, Low) or Placement codes to specific products. These assignments override default sorting rules to force high-margin or seasonal items to the top of the grid, ensuring your strategic inventory gets maximum visibility.

Control Search Results Order with Sorting Rules

Agentforce Commerce for B2C sorting rules help you to control the presentation of search results to the shopper. You can use sorting rules to bring products to the attention of customers by having them appear at the top of search results. You can use any attribute to sort search results or use a weighted blend of multiple attributes by creating dynamic attributes.

After the search engine finds the products, it determines the display order. You create sorting rules to control this presentation.

There are several ways that you can use sorting rules on your storefront.

  • Sorting for keyword searches: Applied to customer searches that use the keyword search box.
  • Availability ranking: Promote in-stock items and demote out-of-stock items. Use Availability Ranking to push unavailable or low-stock products to the end of search results.
  • Text relevance: Boost products when the search term appears in high-value attributes. If the customer searches for “notebook,” items with notebook in the name appear higher than items with notebook only in the long description.
  • Rule hierarchy: Break ranking ties with sequential rules. If the first rule sorts by Search Placement, the system uses the second rule, for example Return Rate, to sort items that have the same placement value.
  • Category sorting rules: Sorts products in searches by a category. Category sorting rules are only available for navigation categories.
  • Storefront sorting options: Shoppers select how to sort search results returned by a category or keyword search. The storefront sorting options that you configure appear in the Sort By dropdown at the top of search results.
  • Dynamic attributes: Combine different attributes with a specific weighting.
  • Keyword groups: Used to define extra sorting rules based on customer search terms.

You can use sorting rules alone, in a campaign, or in an A/B test.

  • Alone: You set a default sorting rule for a category in a storefront catalog or keyword search, outside the context of a campaign or A/B test.
  • Campaign: You use sorting rules in a campaign to ensure that product search results appear in the order you specify as part of the campaign.
  • A/B Test: You can configure an A/B test segment that defines sorting rules that only apply to a segment of visitors.

Narrow Decisions with Search Refinements

When a broad search like “shoes” returns thousands of results, shoppers need filters to narrow the search results. Search refinements help shoppers narrow results by attributes, such as price, category, color, or newness.

Bucketing

Group attribute values into buckets to prevent clutter.

  • Bucket by value: Group multiple color values (Crimson, Ruby, Garnet) under a single label, “Red.” The shopper selects Red and sees all relevant variations.
  • Bucket by price: Define price ranges, for example $50–$100, so customers filter by budget without selecting specific dollar amounts.
  • Bucket by period: Group items by date ranges to highlight “New Arrivals.”

Search Refinements with filters. A large collection of shoe styles and brands are filtered by Value, Price, and Period, resulting in three smaller groupings.

Deepest Common Category

The system determines which refinements to show based on the deepest common category of the results. If a search result set contains items from multiple categories, the storefront shows only the refinements configured for the category that encompasses all found products.

Maintain Data Accuracy with Search Indexes

Make sure that the changes you make to products, inventory, and marketing content appear accurately and quickly in search results.

When you update product descriptions, add new synonyms, or change categorization, the storefront doesn’t reflect these changes immediately. You rebuild the appropriate indexes to show current information to shoppers. A stale index results in customers seeing out-of-stock items or failing to find new products, directly impacting conversion.

Optimize Strategy with Search Analytics

Identify failed searches and high-converting terms to improve search configuration continuously.

Data is the foundation of your merchandising decisions. Agentforce Commerce for B2C Reports and Dashboards and other analytics provide metrics that help you monitor the health of your search strategy.

Searches Without Results

This report lists queries that returned zero products. These are missed sales opportunities.

  • Provide alternatives: If customers search for a brand you don’t carry, create a specific No Results message suggesting alternatives.
  • Provide expanded possibilities: If customers use a term you don’t use, for example sneakers vs. running shoes, add the term to your Synonym dictionary.

Search Conversion Report

Identify which search terms lead to orders.

Shows the search phrases used, total orders, and average merchandise total per search.

  • Take advantage of search term results: If a term converts well, create a specific landing page and use a search redirect to send traffic there for a branded experience.
  • Adjust sorting rules: If a high-volume term has low conversion, inspect the search results. To ensure that the best products appear first, adjust sorting rules or text relevance boosting.

Top Search Terms

To gain insight into customer demand patterns, review the Top Search Terms report. This report provides a view of the most frequent queries, regardless of whether they yielded results. Use this to plan inventory purchases or new category creations.

Next Up

In this unit you learned how to configure Agentforce Commerce for B2C Search to convert shopper search queries into orders and revenue. Next, you learn how to personalize the shopping experience with AI Search tools.

Resources

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