Spell Correction

Instant, intelligent, and always-learning spell correction is offered as a piece of Autocomplete. This helps aid shoppers in real-time to close gaps in their journey, thereby reducing frustrated exits from your site and further guiding them towards conversion.

What is it?

When a shopper enters a search query that is more than three characters in length, we run their text through our spell correction algorithm known as the Search API. The Search API processes the text and provides suggested search queries back to the shopper.

Integrated Spell Correction reduces Zero Result Searches and increases the number of spell corrections by rerouting shoppers to more useful pages. This is done in a few ways. First, Integrated Spell Correction returns more relevant corrections because it relies on the product catalog to correct misspelled terms. This significantly improves corrections for terms with different spacing configurations. For example, let's say a shopper searches for "ripcurl", and your product catalog includes data for "Rip Curl". Integrated Spell Correction looks at the product catalog and can recognize "Rip Curl" as a relevant correction.

With Integrated Spell Correction, we also conduct a search before correcting a term. This means that we first search for whatever the user has typed in the search form, regardless of whether it has a match in the product catalog. If no results are found, then the system will display results for a corrected term.

Integrated Spell Correction further empowers merchandisers with a spell correction blocklist that can be used to block terms from being corrected. The spell correction blocklist should be used when you want shoppers to be redirected to a zero results page for a given search term. Brands are a great candidate for the blocklist. If you notice that shoppers are searching for a brand that you do not carry, you can add that term to the blocklist. This way, shoppers who search for that brand will intentionally be directed to a Zero Results Page to demonstrate that you clearly do not carry that brand.

Disable Spell Correction for SKUs

A new configuration for spell correction is now available within the Athos console. Enabling this feature will prevent Integrated Spell Correction (ISC) from triggering for SKU searches.

Currently, a SKU that is no longer available (i.e., discontinued, backordered, OOS, etc.) is corrected to another, entirely different SKU. This is especially detrimental for industries like home improvement, technology, and automotive, where there are compatibility considerations. Since SKU searches need to be precise, corrections often lead to a poor shopper experience and increase the potential for a return.

Limitations

Search will only be able to prevent spell corrections for SKU fields configured as a “Code (SKU, MPN, etc.)” type. This means if the SKU value exists in another searchable field that is not configured as code (i.e., product title), it will still be subject to spell corrections.

Enabling the feature

The feature is not enabled by default. Reach out to your customer success manager to have this feature enabled.