Sponsored Search

Use the WebAlliance Sponsored Search module to display additional "sponsored" items when a user searches for specific terms or views a specific category.

You must be logged in with a SuperAdmin account to access the Sponsored Search Admin tool.

In this article, we'll go through the setup of an example Sponsored Search record. In this case, when a user searches for the term "taps", we'd like to show some of our house-brand taps as "sponsored" search results alongside the standard search results.

The Admin Panel

Configuring a New Sponsored Search Record

To get started with a new Sponsored Search record, click "New" on the Sponsored Search Admin page.

Tip - to edit an existing Sponsored Search record, simply double-click its name on the left side of the Admin page.

Definition

Give the Sponsored Search record a name and description. These are for your records and don't appear on the user-facing pages of the website.

If you'd like to set Start and End Dates for the Sponsored Search record, check the "Scheduled" box and set the appropriate dates.

Trigger

The "trigger" is the search term or category view that will cause the user to see the sponsored search results. To configure a new trigger, click "New Trigger".

Set the trigger type (Keyword or Category) and configure the trigger. 

When setting up a Keyword trigger, you'll decide whether the keyword search phrase type is "Exact" or "Fuzzy". "Fuzzy" allows you to easily account for forms-of-the-word, such as plurals. "Exact" means the user must type exactly the term entered in order to trigger the sponsored results.

When setting up a Category trigger, select the item category from the drop-down list.

Multiple triggers for a single Sponsored Search record are allowed.

Note - the user will trigger the Sponsored Search result from a Keyword trigger only if they search for the trigger term alone. In this example, "taps" would trigger the desired Sponsored Search result but "spiral taps" would not.

On the "Search" step of the wizard, define what should show up on the page of search results associated with the trigger you created.  There are three options for you to choose from:

  1. Keyword:  a list of items based on a keyword search.  See more about how to configure the Keyword Sponsored Search Type in the Sponsored Search Results - Keyword article.
  2. Item List:  a manually created list of items.  See more about how to configure the Item List Sponsored Search Type in the Sponsored Search Results - Item List article.
  3. Banner:  a banner image or slideshow.  See more about how to configure the Banner Sponsored Search Type in the Sponsored Search Results - Banner article.

Review

The final step of setup is to review your record. This screen shows you the configuration of your Sponsored Search record and allows you to edit any elements of it.

When you're satisfied with the record, click "Save and Preview" to see a preview of the search results page along with your sponsored results.

Note - the "preview" may not exactly visually represent your website. It's intended to show you the general layout of the search results and will be displayed as the site would be seen on a small screen. 

If your website has enabled mobile-responsive display, Sponsored Search records set to display on the "Right" layout will be shown at the top of the list in the Admin preview screen.

The Search Display

In this example, the Sponsored Results section shows the first 2 results for a Keyword search for "Taps" using the Best Match method. From those results, the user can add to their cart or use the "Quote Cart" module (if enabled on your website).