1. Overview
Filtering product with layered navigation is a very useful tool that Magento supports users. However, it still has a lot of disadvantages: selecting only one option at once; inflexible price filter; unfriendly URLs… It will take much valuable time as well as be inconvenient for users. With the aim of providing the best experience in filtering product by layered navigation, BSS Commerce launched Magento SEO Layered Navigation extension to improve all above drawbacks of Magento default.
SEO Layered Navigation Extension provides powerful functions which help users to filter products in the most effective way. Thus, your site will become more professional and user- friendly, which is an important factor that keeps loyal customers as well as enhance business performance.
2. How Does It Work?
2.1 SEO Layered Navigation settings
Please go to System ⇒ Configuration ⇒ BSSCOMMERCE ⇒ SEO Layered Navigation.
There are 4 main parts you can fix as your wishes: General settings, Price Filter, Decimal Filter, SEO Filter.
2.1.1 General settings
In Enable jQuerry, choose Yes to allow Jquery Library combining with SEO Layered Navigation Extension when it runs on your website, otherwise choose No.
In Expand/ Collapse, choose Yes/No to enable/ disable expand/ collapse function. When this function is enabled, in the frontend, users will have the choice of expanding or collapsing an attribute as wish.
In Use Ajax in Category View/Search Result, choose Yes/No to enable/ disable Ajax loading for category view and search result separately. Using Ajax will help you to load product only with changed part instead of the whole page.
2.1.2 Price Filter
In Display box, you can choose how to display the price filter from 4 forms:
- Default: the price will be displayed in fixed ranges as the default of Magento.
- Slider: the price will be displayed in a slider which allows users to slide leftward and rightward to choose a suitable price range.
- From/to: users can add specific values into 2 input boxes and click Submit to select a suitable price range.
- Slider and From/to: users can use both slider and input box to filter price.
This is an example of Slider and From/to displaying:
In Slider Step, you can decide how many price units will be added/ subtracted each time users slide rightward/ leftward. For example, if you set up Slider Price = 3, users only can slider from $1 to $4 to $7 and so on.
In Show Currency in Slider, if you choose Yes, the currency will be displayed beside price in the slider. If you choose No, it will be hidden.
In Slider Skin, you can choose the appearance of the slider with 4 forms: Classic/ Round/ Plastic/ Round Plastic.
2.1.3 Decimal Filter
In this field, you can set up how to display attributes which are in decimal forms such as size, weight, height, age. Similar to Price Filter, you can decide how to display, slider step and slider skin for the decimal filter.
2.2.4 SEO Filter
In SEO URLs, when you choose Enable, all URLs created after filtering will follow a logical rule. It will contain the product name and selected attribute’s options. Otherwise, choose No to disable.
For example, this is the URL created after user select pants and denim category, price from $75 to $ 510 and size 32 for a kind of men shirt:
2.2 Attribute configuration
You can set up whether to show an attribute in layer navigation or not by going to Catalog ⇒ Attributes ⇒ Manage Attributes.
Select one attribute then open Attribute Property ⇒ Frontend Properties,
In Use In Layered Navigation select from 3 options:
- No: not show this attribute in layered navigation
- Filterable (with results): attribute will be shown in layered navigation only when result >0
- Filterable (no results): attribute will be shown in layered navigation even when result = 0
In Use In Search Results Layered Navigation, choose Yes to show attribute in search results layered navigation, otherwise choose No.