WP Engine recently announced a new eCommerce solution for Small/Medium Businesses (SMBs) looking to easily create a mobile-friendly WooCommerce store or scale up, optimize, and increase revenue for an existing online store.
WP Engine’s eCommerce solution, built on their industry-leading infrastructure, includes a quick setup wizard, eCommerce-ready WordPress themes, drag and drop tools to add products in seconds, and automated plugin updates for enhanced security.
The feature we’re most excited about, however, is the integration with ElasticPress.io — the only fully-integrated end-to-end SaaS solution for adding the power of Elasticsearch to a WordPress site.
eCommerce Hosting + Premium Search
With 43% of online retail shoppers heading directly to the search bar, successful search experiences driving double the spend of other shoppers, and 68% of shoppers saying they wouldn’t return to a site with a bad search experience, WP Engine knew they needed a premium search experience baked in. They chose ElasticPress.io, already vetted by WP Engine for inclusion in their Solution Center, to deliver a faster, smarter version of WordPress, while leveraging the power of Elasticsearch behind the scenes.
The ElasticPress.io integration, referred to as “Instant Search” or “Instant Store Search” in WP Engine’s eCommerce hosting plans, gives customers access to all of the advanced search features of ElasticPress.io and the ability to manage searchable content in real-time:
- Offload complex search queries and content-heavy views that commonly strain WordPress’ MySQL backend, so visitors can find what they want quickly and content creators can save time.
- Tailor search results to showcase your most valuable and relevant products with the Weighting Engine and Custom Results Editor.
- Manage common misspellings and associate interchangeable search keywords or phrases — like sweatshirt and hoodie — with the Synonym Dashboard.
- Help shoppers see exactly where search results match their search query with search term highlighting within the content.
- Make it easy and fast for shoppers to find what they’re looking for and clarify search intent with Autosuggest capabilities.
- Search custom post types, categories, taxonomies, metadata, and more with a NoSQL data engine that responds to your site’s unique content.
Store owners who enable ElasticPress.io improve user experience, deliver blazing-fast searches, offer more relevant results, and see revenue increases of up to 18%. WP Engine customer Alan Affelt of Stitchtopia shared, “the new search functionality has given our online store a major boost, including a 12% increase in sales and a higher cart value per customer.”
Speed, Stability, And Security
Elasticsearch, out of the box, is optimized for writing a large amount of data and reading it only occasionally — when not tuned properly, the Elastic endpoint can crash. Elasticsearch also has no security measures built-in and the common workaround to proxy data through WordPress slows response times. This means site owners are often stuck between a rock and a hard place: choosing between performance and security.
With years of experience implementing Elasticsearch in high-traffic production environments, we built ElasticPress.io to prioritize stability, speed, and security.
- ElasticPress.io is deployed via Amazon Web Services (AWS), which allows your search to scale as needed without delay.
- Elasticsearch itself is tuned to support a high rate of search queries combined with infrequent but memory-intensive indexing processes. The result is a product that performs well at scale, with no complex configuration needed.
- The ElasticPress.io endpoints, like the one for Autosuggest, connect directly to our servers, eliminating any potential performance drags.
- Enhanced security measures ensure your private content remains private and your store is protected from malicious behavior, like attempting to use the Autosuggest endpoint to steal data.
ElasticPress.io Partner Initiative
As a longtime WP Engine agency partner, 10up is excited to welcome the WordPress hosting company as an ElasticPress.io Site Search Partner.
For our partners, everything needed for secure user management is handled behind the scenes, from index privacy to advanced features like unauthenticated read-only access for direct autosuggest search.
- The ElasticPress.io Provisioning API enables hosting providers and resellers to create and manage multiple endpoints with minimum effort. It supports real-time user management, as well as instant, automated provisioning of new cluster resources.
- Access to our support wiki empowers in-house support teams to provide a knowledgeable, helpful, uniform experience for customers.
- The ElasticPress.io support team — familiar with the nuances of both WordPress and Elasticsearch — serves as the point of escalation, providing 24/7 ticket-based support for all ElasticPress.io customers, and video-call support for partners, resellers, and premium customers on Enterprise plans.
Get Started Today
Getting started with WP Engine and ElasticPress.io is easy.
To get everything you need to build, launch, or migrate an existing WooCommerce store on a fast, secure, scalable eCommerce platform, pick an eCommerce hosting plan that includes Instant Store Search. By the time you’re done signing up, ElasticPress will be ready to go.
Then, check out a webinar I co-hosted with WP Engine — How to Optimize Search for Your WordPress Ecommerce Store — to learn about fixing searches that don’t convert, using analytics data to customize search results, tailoring the search experience for shoppers, and how enhanced search can improve your bottom line.
If you’d like details about our reseller program, affiliate program, or Site Search Partner program, or want to find out how we can add enhanced site search to your eCommerce site, reach out and book a call.