On-site search is one of the most important points of contact between a user and an online store’s offering. Visitors often use it to look for a specific product, compare variants, or quickly find a solution that meets their needs. That is why its quality has a direct impact on the convenience of using the website, the number of product pages visited, and the likelihood of making a purchase.
When developing our search engine, we focused not only on the relevance of the results, but also on the flexibility of how it operates. The new solution works in a cookieless model, meaning that it does not require cookies to track users. This means that search can remain fast, convenient, and effective even when the user has not consented to any tracking mechanisms.
Effective search without cookies – what has changed?
Until now, the search engine required customer preferences to be defined as necessary in order to enable it to function regardless of consent. The same applies to all other search engines available on the market. Quarticon has gone one step further, we have completely eliminated cookies, applying the privacy-first principle.
In cookieless mode, the search engine no longer requires any consent, does not set cookies, and launches instantly. Once additional consent is obtained (e.g. for analytics or profiling), a cookie is set on the user’s device.
The entire search engine mechanism has been redesigned so that it can function entirely without cookies, fingerprints, or any other user identifiers. In this way, we address the concern of legal departments as to whether search analytics are necessary for the online store to function properly. If they are not, we do not track users.
Personalization available when needed
Cookieless mode does not mean giving up sales attribution, monitoring, or personalization. If the user provides the appropriate consent, the search engine can expand its functionality by tailoring results to their preferences.
This allows companies to use two models:
- contextual search that operates without the need to track users,
- additional functionalities available after consent has been obtained.
The most important thing is that analytics become an option rather than a condition for the search engine to work effectively. The store can tailor how it operates to its chosen strategy, the nature of its offering, and user expectations.
Balancing convenience and control
The cookieless model responds to the changing expectations of users who want to use convenient services without their activity being tracked automatically. At the same time, it does not prevent companies from developing sales or analyzing the search engine’s effectiveness. It is also possible to use the search engine in the standard “with cookies” mode, with cookies treated as necessary.
Get more info about Quarticon’s search engine here: AI Search for e-coomerce
