Customer Zone

This section demonstrates the features introduced by the Advanced Search add-on module.

When the module is enabled, the appearance of the 'Search' field at the Customer Front End becomes different with the '[+]' sign and the 'Advanced' link added (Figures 6(a) and 6(b)).

Figure 6(a): Advanced search link

Figure 6(b): Regular search screen

While you can still type in a word or phrase and click on the 'Go' button to search for it using the advanced search capability, you can also click on the 'Advanced' link and enter the advanced search screen where you can specify search filters to refine your search for products in the store.

Figure 7: Advanced product search screen

By default, the Advanced Search module performs search through product titles, descriptions, meta tags, extra fields and product options. This can be changed by removing checkmarks against respective areas (Figure 7). You can also refine your search by applying search filters to SKUs, product price and weight ranges, and choosing specific categories to be searched.

If a price range has a label, the label will appear in the drop-down list of prices; if there is no label, then the price range itself will be displayed (Figure 8 illustrates the price ranges defined in Figure 4). If there is no price range defined, the price range search filter will not appear in the Customer Zone.

Figure 8: Sample price ranges

If a weight range has a label, the label will appear in the drop-down list of weights; if there is no label, then the weight range itself will be displayed (Figure 9 illustrates weight ranges defined in Figure 5). If there is no weight range defined, the weight range search filter will not appear in the Customer Zone.

Figure 9: Sample weight ranges

Enter the necessary filters and click on the 'Search' button to see the search results.

You can reset the filters by clicking on the 'Clear settings' link or save the filters for future use by clicking on the 'Save settings' link.