Sitecore MVP Stephen Tynes Talks Site Search Implementation

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Our friends at Coveo recently sat down with Stephen Tynes, Perficient’s Sitecore Practice Director and four-time Sitecore MVP, to chat about site search implementation best practices. Check out part of the conversation below, and head over to Coveo’s blog to read more.

What are the key things you should you look out for when integrating site search or replacing site search on an existing website?

When we evaluate what kind of search experience is required, there are a couple of key things that we consider. From a technical standpoint we look at where the data is coming from? Is all of that data on the website?  Is it coming from different web properties so we need to use Coveo’s web crawler? Are there other connectors that can be used or integrations that need to be built to access data in SharePoint or Salesforce or other platforms? Understanding this helps us to plan how involved from a technical standpoint setting up search may be. It also helps us identify what may be short term vs. long term objectives for search due to the level of complexity.
We also look at the expected volume of search requests and data to be stored. This helps us to begin planning for the necessary impact that the search requirements have on infrastructure, server setup, and considerations such as whether or not Coveo’s new Cloud Platform offering may be an alternative. This option allows Coveo to be configured for use on the website with potentially no impact on the hardware requirements of the site.
We also consider how the data is going to be presented to the users. One of the nice things about using Coveo is the number of UI controls that come out of the box. The controls allow for many basic functionalities including pagination, sorting, and filtering of search content. The Coveo UI controls can be skinned to align to the look and feel of the website and many times are good fit for the expected requirements. As with any 3rd party controls, there are limitations to the flexibility supported. So we normally look to see if this is a good fit for the requirements of the website because we can potentially save significant development effort when using these pre-built controls.

Read more here.