Optimizely
Site Search APIs are flexible to interact with directly when building your search pages, and they come as pre-baked integrations in Site Search UI Kits.
Given there is flexibility to use either UI Kits or Drupal Views, below are important caveats to understand when using Drupal Views with Site Search:
Leverage Site Search UX Features
Without using UI Kits, many features in Site Search related to the search page UX will appear non-functional
when toggled on while using a Drupal View. The Drupal View governs the search page UX and overrides these features.
This includes the following features:
- Results Fields
- Faceting
- Spell Check
- Sorting
- Smart Answers
- Related Searches
Once you have switched to UI Kits, you can dramatically reduce the time spent making changes to the search page.
Does the business team want facets? Go to the Facets tab, click to enable and publish facets within minutes.
Is marketing ready to add AI Smart Answers? Drop the Smart Answers component into your search page. After styling it to match your brand, you will have AI Smart Answers live on your website.
UI Kits position your development team to quickly adopt new business needs, especially as SearchStax continues releasing new search features.
For teams needing additional support, many companies offer IT staffing services. SearchStax is happy to recommend partners in your region.
Limited Support for Additional Drupal Search Modules
Site Search has known compatibility with the following Drupal modules:
Other modules may work but require testing before deploying to Production.
Inefficient Search API Utilization
The Search API is all-encompassing. A traditional site search implementation using UI Kits generates one search request per user query.
In contrast, Drupal Views may require multiple modules for additional features. Each module typically fires its own Search API request, which is then bundled with the search request.
A site using Faceting, Autocomplete, and Spell Check with Drupal Views could potentially consume multiple search requests per single user query.
This not only increases search plan consumption but also adds latency as requests are processed and rendered for the end user.
Reduce Load on Drupal Servers
UI Kits interact directly with the Search API. Search requests no longer need to be processed through the Drupal server.
For publicly facing websites, this can significantly improve search performance and overall user experience, especially during peak business hours.
Unified Search Workbench
Bringing front-end search management, back-end relevancy, and Search Analytics into one unified tool enables marketing and content teams to optimize search performance and drive measurable business outcomes.
Understanding these tradeoffs will help you make informed decisions when integrating front-end search experiences with Site Search capabilities.
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