Welcome, Guest ( Customer Panel | Login )




 All Forums
 VPCart Forum
 Add-ons for VP-ASP
 Enhanced Paging/Searching
 New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly
Next Page
Author Previous Topic Topic Next Topic
Page: of 2

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - February 16 2008 :  05:05:28  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
We've just released a new version of our paging/searching addon (BYZ116) so that it now includes some pretty cool filtering logic, but when I trawled the forum I spotted that my original post for it has gone awol, so here's another one...


Enhanced Paging/Searching:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/shopexd.asp?id=159

Enhance your customers' visit by giving them improved search results.


Sessionless paging - no timeouts for the query.
Multiple tabs/windows allowed for paging.
Products-per-page drop-down for customers.
Shows "hit" categories from the search as well as the individual products.
Displays number of hit products.
Shows the customer what they searched on.
Intuitive/simple google-style paging links.
Intuitive/simple filters (refining searches)

demo:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/publicdemos/default.asp?code=BYZ116

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons

AccentAlarms
Starting Member

USA
46 Posts

Posted - February 16 2008 :  10:24:55  Show Profile  Visit AccentAlarms's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I simply wanted to share with everyone here that this is one of the BYZ products that I believe will really improve the quality and experience your customer s have on your site(s). We have over 13,000 products and we found that our clients were having a difficult time finding what they were looking for. We combined the enhanced page searching with the Keyword admin tool to and have found that our initial search results are much better, but the filtering of those results is now incredibly more efficient and user friendly.

I would highly recommend the Enhanced Paging/Searching (BYZ116) and the Keywords Admin tool as well. I have to also be sure to point out how great it is to work with BYZ and Simon. When I initially installed the paging/addon there was no “filtering” function included. After, sharing with Simon how beneficial I thought it would be to have a better way to filter the results, within a week he’s updated the add-on with an amazing filtering tool!

Simon points out they demo area above, but if you would like to see these add-on working with a few more products feel free to check out the “visitor” functionality of these add-ons at www.AccentAlarms.com


Sean McNeal
Accent Alarms, Inc
Better Products, Services, and prices.
(877) 345-ALARMS
www.AccentAlarms.com
Go to Top of Page

norik000
Starting Member

USA
43 Posts

Posted - February 16 2008 :  21:46:37  Show Profile  Visit norik000's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Hi Simon

this is a wonderful piece of add-on. As Sean said, it is even more useful for merchants with more than 1000 products in the database.

I hope you add more products to your database, so you can showcase the usefulness of this add-on

I really liked it when I saw on Accent Alarms. I plan to get this.

-------------------------------
www.Parscat.com
<signature>3D</signature>
Go to Top of Page

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - February 17 2008 :  06:03:12  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Hi,
glad you like it; yes, the demo does really need more products added to it to showcase the filtering aspect better.
the best "demo" though would be to get a list of real sites that use it highlighted on the forum (and as a list of examples in the product-detail page for the addon), but we can't do that without the site owners giving explicit permission.

so, if anyone who's installed it wants to allow us to use their site as an example link on our product-detail page for it, can you let us know? (we'll work out some kind of discount/coupon deal for people who allow us to use their sites as examples of various addons; I'll finalise the discount rules for that with adrian, my boss, and then we'll post the details of the general showcasing/discount aspect here and on our site)

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
Go to Top of Page

skynet104
VP-CART New User

94 Posts

Posted - March 11 2008 :  14:05:08  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Well, got this product, but not pleased at the moment, am not able to get the search to find the products in a combo way.

example:
When looking for item (music cd's) i need to able to combine the name of the artist with the name of the song, as i do with the regular vpasp search.
This addon just find the name of the artist if typed alone, but would not combine both criterias, example: "prince purple rain" it should show only the cd that belongs to prince and contains the song purple rain...
any ideas?

Edited by - skynet104 on March 11 2008 14:06:26
Go to Top of Page

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - March 12 2008 :  16:44:14  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
it is possible to do that; the precise logic will depend on exactly how the data's structured; the addon lets you configure various bits, such as which columns to look at when searching for keywords (ie straight-forward text searches), additional (ie specific) columns to search on, and filter searches, and you can combine those with as many permutations as you like in searches/forms/links, so it should be possible to do it, it just depends on the exact nature of the data.

if anyone uses the addon and finds that they can't do a search/link that they need to, then let us know; it'll usually just be a case of tweaking the configuration settings or perhaps changing the search mini-form a bit to combine the relevant fields with the right names etc.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons

Edited by - devshb on March 12 2008 16:47:28
Go to Top of Page

RNN
VP-CART New User

USA
54 Posts

Posted - March 16 2008 :  09:54:33  Show Profile  Visit RNN's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Will the results automatically use our shop display products as it customized a lot?

Bob

Bob
Go to Top of Page

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - March 16 2008 :  14:22:05  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
the actual product display (ie the bits that use the product detail/summary templates) aren't effected at all, so it should work fine for those bits; it depends on what other bits are customised as to how/if it'd work.

it does use shopdisplayproducts.asp, but there's a small change you make to it as part of the install which sets up the query and prints the new header/trailer for the page-number links etc.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons

Edited by - devshb on March 16 2008 15:00:55
Go to Top of Page

RNN
VP-CART New User

USA
54 Posts

Posted - March 17 2008 :  20:56:14  Show Profile  Visit RNN's Homepage  Reply with Quote
How complex is the install?
I bought a few addons and they weren't that easy?

Bob
Go to Top of Page

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - March 18 2008 :  00:59:17  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Hi,
It's relatively simple, but because it potentially effects so much core customer pages/functions it's best to do it on a test folder/area first, and then release it to the live area when you're happy with how it works/looks, or at the least to make sure you backup any files before you change them so that you can restore to the pre-changed version if there's an aspect that doesn't work how you like and you need it looking into.

If it's any help, we've created a new service:

Installation Covering Service:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/shopexd.asp?id=87

which is a one-off cost which'll cover you on a given domain for all byz addon installs (new addons that you buy, or upgrades, with no date limit, ie permanent cover for installation of byz addons)

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
Go to Top of Page

saki
VP-CART New User

82 Posts

Posted - June 19 2008 :  09:49:18  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Simon seems to have gone round the bend for a bit again. Does anyone know if the ADVANCED SEARCH page with the standard VPASP 6.5 works with this module. I've tried it and it returns ALL the products in my database regardless of selections in the form.

I'm just trying to figure out if I've a problem with my install or it's something that the Advanced Search page just has to be removed and will not work???

ANY help here from existing users?

PS this is a fantastic add on and really has some potential for making a site more modern.

Edited by - saki on June 19 2008 09:53:16
Go to Top of Page

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - June 19 2008 :  11:21:33  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
hi
saki; can you email me direct? i'm guessing there's a ticket gone awol somewhere that I might have missed with spam filters etc.

The advanced search page won't work with the paging addon at the moment, although it might do in a later version; there's a legitimate reason for this, which is that the advanced search page is way too complex/awkward for most visitors, so 99% of people would use a simple mini-search form, category links, brand links, price links, and filtering etc.

There is, however, a pending version of the paging addon which uses your paging-addon filters that you configure and automatically creates a relevant search mini-form using whatever your filter criteria can be, the idea being that you specify what you want people to be able to search on via your filters and flag each one as "show in search form?", and then you call a single byz function anywhere (side panel or main page) to "draw" the relevant parameter search form for it.

Lots of people have mentioned the pros and cons of the standard advanced-search form on this forum, and the general consensus is that it's too complex for most people to use; you'd be better to not use it at all and just use more simple links and filters etc; it's fantastically rare that any real visitor would use an advanced search; if it's that much hassle to find what you want then you'd normally just go somewhere else instead; mini-form and other simple/related links would be the way to go.

That's just a personal opinion though; once the newer version of the addon's release (ie with the "mini search form" call/option, I think that'll probably be able to do what you're after, and you'd then replace your standard advanced-search page with a call to that show-mini-search form function (which would have things like supplier poplists or whatever else you configure for it)

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
Go to Top of Page

saki
VP-CART New User

82 Posts

Posted - June 19 2008 :  11:32:21  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Just sent an email with ticket number.
Go to Top of Page

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - January 15 2009 :  13:42:00  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
in case anyone else wonders how to do this (ie to replace your shopsearch.asp file with one that's compatible with the byz116 addon), you'd just use/install the latest version of byz116 and create a shopsearch.asp file which has only this in it:

<%Option Explicit%>
<!--#include file="shop$db.asp"-->
<%
ShopPageHeader
BYZ_SLS_DISPLAY_FILTERING_SEARCH_MINI_FORM "shopdisplayproducts.asp"
ShopPageTrailer
%>


I'll add that info/file to the byz116 addon when it gets onto its next version, but for now that's how to achieve it.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
Go to Top of Page

RNN
VP-CART New User

USA
54 Posts

Posted - March 15 2009 :  10:24:11  Show Profile  Visit RNN's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Simon,

a few questions
For the small online retail shop, a sharp product search is crucial to a successful shopping experience. Nonetheless, most businesses can't afford to keep serving up failed search results. Industry analysts say that if a desirable match is not returned on a query, roughly 75 percent of shoppers will look elsewhere.

Unfortunately, failed searches are quite common. The incorrect spelling of a product name or brand or the use of multiple words in a query that doesn't support phrases can trigger a misfire, but it doesn't end there. Sometimes, valid results are produced, but they don't correspond to what the shopper has in mind.

Does your addon address those issues?


Bob


Bob
Go to Top of Page

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - March 16 2009 :  04:15:33  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
BYZ116 does help on that front I think, in that it shows a list of "hit" categories as well as the products found, so if a search doesn't directly hit a product then it could still hit a category, and then the user would normally click on the category.

For the text searches (ie the mini-form where you enter only a keyword and press go) you can configure the columns to look for in the products table for the match, and you can also configure the columns to look for in the categories table too, and you can use any columns you want for those.

Here's a copy of the config file for those points which show the defaults (which you can change) -

' Searchable Columns
' ------------------
' The list of columns that you want the product-search to use when
' looking up a keyword
' Use "p." for product columns, and "c." for category columns
xbyz_sls_product_search_keywords_search_column_list="p.cname,p.cdescription,p.keywords,c.catextra"

' Display Related Categories ? ("Y" or "N")
' -----------------------------------------
' Do you want to display related categories on your
' results pages? (ie using the search criteria to display a list
' of categories at the top of the page which are related to the search conditions)
' Use "Y" to use/display related categories
' Use "N" if you don't want to use/display related categories
xbyz_sls_show_related_categories_flag="Y"


' Related Categories Match Columns
' --------------------------------
' (only used if xbyz_sls_show_related_categories_flag is set to "Y")
' You would normally set this to a categories column that holds a list of keywords for the category.
' Enter the list of categories columns (each column name separated by a comma)
' that you want the related-categories to look in to see if there's a match
' for the search criteria that was originally performed to retrieve the products.
' For example, if the user searches on "table" and you want catdescriptions of
' "coffee tables" and "dining tables" to be shown as related categories on their
' product results, then you'd enter
' "catdescription", ie it's the category equivalent of the product-search fields
' when trying to find related categories.
xbyz_sls_related_categories_columns="catdescription,catextra"

You can configure other searches/filters too, but for me it's that initial basic keyword search which is the key to people staying on the site (ie I think you're right; if you don't get some kind of relevant match on your first basic word search where you can click/drill-down etc then you'd normally leave the site).

So, you could add mis-spellings to some spare category and/or products fields to hold extra values (or just add them to existing keywords data).

How it interprets a phrase is important though too, and that aspect's something we'd like to get feedback on. At the moment with byz116 if someone enters a keyword search using a phrase, it'll look in all the configured columns for a value which has that phrase within it (ignoring upper/lower case), and if it's found in any of those configured columns then it counts it as a hit/match. Phrases are something that's open to debate and something we'd consider enhancing the addon for if anyone has other ideas on how they'd like to match phrases.

eg if you looked for "red pen" then a product description of "you'll like this maroon-red pen, it's really good" will be retrieved, as would "a pack of 10 red pens", as would a category of "packets of red pens", but "red fountain pen" wouldn't (because it doesn't have the string "red pen" within it)

ie it uses where [any configured search value column] like '%searchstring%'

if you wanted "red fountain pen" to be returned with a search of "red pen" then I think we'll add that as an option on the next version of the addon, but for now if you wanted to add it to an existing version of byz116 you'd edit the byz_sls_inc.asp file and just change these lines:

1:
tsearchthiscondition=tsearchfields_values(j-1)&" like '%"&trawvalsql&"%'"

to:
tsearchthiscondition=tsearchfields_values(j-1)&" like '%"&Replace(trawvalsql," ","%")&"%'"

2:
tsearchthiscondition=tsearchfields_values(i-1)&" like '%"&byz_sls_p_keyword_cleanforsql&"%'"

to:

tsearchthiscondition=tsearchfields_values(i-1)&" like '%"&Replace(byz_sls_p_keyword_cleanforsql," ","%")&"%'"

3:
tsearchthiscondition=tsearchfields_values(i-1)&" like '%"&tsearchtext&"%'"

to:

tsearchthiscondition=tsearchfields_values(i-1)&" like '%"&Replace(tsearchtext," ","%")&"%'"

That would do a search like:
where [any configured search value column] like '%searchstring%'
(but where the searchstring replaces spaces with pcts/wildcards)

eg:
where [any configured search value column] like '%red%pen%'
(which would also return things like "infra-red security protected ballpoint pens")

we're open to ideas/suggestions on byz116, but I think having the ability to replace the spaces in the phrase with a pct (different to using an "or" for each value; means things still need to be in the right order which is usually more correct/relevant) is something we'll add to the next version; in the meantime just do the above if you want to use that kind of pct replacement in the search query.

If you want to change the keywords (for example to add category level keywords to the relevant products, or to enhance your product keywords to include other product column sources etc), then you could try:
BYZ119 - KeyWord Tools for VP-ASP:
http://www.bigyellowkey.com/mysoftware_product_details.asp?prdid=320&opu=n

if you wanted both byz116 and byz119 then you could try the seo bundle which includes both plus loads of other stuff too:
BYZ146 - VPASP SEO Bundle:
http://www.bigyellowkey.com/mysoftware_product_details.asp?prdid=343&opu=n

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons

Edited by - devshb on March 16 2009 05:23:08
Go to Top of Page
Page: of 2
Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  
Next Page
 New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly
Jump To:
Snitz Forums 2000
0 Item(s)
$0.00