Search Results Customization

The Search Results tab in UI Customization lets you tailor every aspect of how search results appear to your customers—on both desktop and mobile. While general layout and display settings apply by default, here you can override them specifically for search results, ensuring that product listings, filtering, sorting, and messaging align perfectly with your brand and user experience goals.

Device View Selection

At the top of the page, use the Desktop View and Mobile View toggles to switch between device-specific settings. This ensures your search results are optimized for different screen sizes:
  • Desktop View: Configure wider layouts, multi‑column grids, and detailed product cards.
  • Mobile View: Enable compact layouts, single‑column grids, and streamlined cards for touch navigation.

Overriding Default Settings

By default, the search results page inherits the Layout, Grid, Card, and Sort configurations defined in the general UI Customization → Layout tab. To customize search results independently:
  1. Toogle Use different page layout for search results
  2. Toggle Use different product grid layout for search results
  3. Toggle Use different product card layout for search results
  4. Toggle Use different sort options for search results
Once enabled, each section below becomes configurable for search results only.

Search Result Settings

Purpose: Configure core search page behaviors.
  • Show Search Box: Toggle visibility of the search input on the results page.
  • Show Content Pages: Include content pages (e.g., FAQs) alongside product results.
  • Search Result Page URL: Set or override the URL slug by creating a custom page in BigCommerce and link the URL here (default: /search-results/).
Keeping the search box visible encourages users to refine their queries on the fly.

No Results Settings

Purpose: Customize messaging and fallback when a search yields zero products.
  • No Results Message: Enter up to 6 words of friendly copy (e.g., “Sorry, no matches for <%= searchTerm %>”).
  • Dynamic Tag Replacement: Use the <%= searchTerm %> tag to inject the user’s query into your message automatically.
For Example, “We couldn’t find any ‘<%= searchTerm %>’. Here are some popular items instead.”

Recommend Fallback Products

Purpose: Display alternative or popular products when no exact matches exist.
  • Enable Recommendations: Toggle on to curate a fallback recommendation widget.
  • Source Configuration: Choose the recommendation widget and the title for the recommendation widget.
Outcome: Keep users engaged by offering relevant alternatives, reducing bounce rates from no‑result searches.