eCommerce search on websites is really important. Most users will use this rather than a category / menu structure. We can see this from website heat analysis.
So now the eCommerce owner is faced with selecting a search engine for their site.
We recommend evaluating under the following titles.
Speed, Cost, Complexity of Implementation, Control of results, GDPR, Platform compatibility, Feature Set.
Speed : the most important – Saas generally will slow the site – Infrastructure will not add any speed penalty. Simply by the way they are called. Its important as we know it has direct hit on revenue on an eCommerce site.
Cost : Infrastructure is billed by CPU cycles and generally cheaper than a Saas who bill on features x number of products listed. Saas will get expensive fast. Also a lot of Saas platforms will make claims about how many sales came from the use of their platform – this is not metric that can be calculated accurately and most Saas platforms will over rate their effect on sales. As a store owner you will know if its improving sales by looking at the before and after implementation.
Control of results : Both have the control of the results but the Infrastructure requires coding to achieve where as Saas has it managed in dashboards and settings, i.e. no technical ability required.
GDPR : this is huge especially in regulatory and compliance heavy sites. Think of medical sites selling product thats linked to a persons medical health. In the Infrastructure solution the data stays on the platform and does not go to another server. In Saas you need to examine their compliancy and GDPR statements. Generally you have to assume the data is leaving your organisation and from there on you have little or no control and you are in sub processor territory.
Platform compatibility : Infrastructure is not platform reliant as it runs on API’s . Saas is platform reliant. If the Saas does not support your platform and does not have an API then you cannot use it. That said most Search tools will support all the major platforms.
Feature set : in Infrastructure – the feature set is limited by the ability of your technical abilities. In Saas the feature set is defined and you are limited to the features listed.
Here’s a detailed breakdown across all your criteria, with the comparison widget below.
As an agency we recommend Infrastructure search solutions over Saas on a cost, GDPR, and Speed basis.