Catalog search that knows what B2B buyers type: Elastic backend, OOTB facets, synonyms, and contracted-price filters.
Advanced Search pairs an Elastic Search-backed catalog with six out-of-the-box filter facets (Search Terms, Product Rating, Category, Custom Attribute, Price Range, and Brand) plus unlimited dynamically-generated facets driven by Configurable Attributes you flag as catalog filters. The Price Range filter respects the logged-in customer's contracted prices, not list, so a buyer on a 30% contract sees and filters against their own numbers. Synonyms and keyword aliases keep results honest no matter how a buyer types a part number.
ElasticSearch Backend
6 OOTBFilter Facets
UnlimitedConfigurable-Attribute Filters
Tier-AwarePrice Range Filter
Synonym& Alias Expansion
What is Advanced Search in Clarity eCommerce?
Clarity eCommerce Framework has a built-in advanced Search capability that is an Elastic Search-backed catalog query and faceted filtering system that ensures a better user search experience. Buyers type a keyword query (a SKU, a manufacturer part number, a generic term, a spec) and the platform returns results from an Elastic Search index that knows every product's name, description, category, attribute values, brand, and contracted price. From there, six out-of-the-box filter facets narrow the result set:
Search Terms, Product Rating, Category, Custom Attribute, Price Range, and Brand
. Stacked alongside those six are dynamically-generated facets fed by any product Attribute flagged “Use as Catalog Filter,” giving you an unbounded surface for industry-specific filtering. Voltage on electrical, Material on industrial, Diameter on plumbing, Compliance Class on medical. All without custom development.
B2B changes the entire game, including the search filters. The B2B differentiator is what the Price Range filter does. In a consumer cart, a Price Range slider filters against the public list price. In Clarity, the slider operates against the logged-in customer's contracted prices: tier, contract, account-specific override, whatever the
Multi-Tiered Pricing
engine resolves for that buyer. A contractor on a 30% discount filtering “under $500” sees products under their $500, not under list's $500. That single behavior keeps the catalog honest to the deal you actually signed.
77% of potential buyers that search and don't find what they're looking for, leave your site and never return (Google study). THAT is why this is such an important element. Advanced Search sits inside a broader catalog experience that includes
Product Catalog
browsing,
Content Management
-driven category landing pages,
SEO-friendly URLs
, and Sub-Category Carousels. All of them share the same Elastic Search index and the same six-plus-N filter facet set: one query engine, one filter language, one consistent navigation pattern across catalog, category pages, and dedicated search results.
The problem: B2B buyers don't shop, they hunt.
A consumer browses for inspiration. A B2B buyer arrives with a part number, a spec, a deadline, and a contracted price already in their head, and they want the catalog to match all four. Generic search rails fall apart on the second filter, the third synonym, and the first time someone with a contract price uses a slider tied to list.
Step-by-step walkthrough
Setup Workflow
Standing up Advanced Search and catalog filters
Seven steps from confirming the Elastic Search index to validating that buyers see tier-aware prices in the filter slider.
1
Enable Elastic Search indexing
In the Admin Portal, confirm Elastic Search is indexing your product catalog. SKUs, names, descriptions, attribute values, category assignments, brand, and contracted-price tiers are all crawled and tokenized into the search index so storefront queries return at sub-second latency.
2
Turn on the six OOTB filter facets
The catalog ships with Search Terms, Product Rating, Category, Custom Attribute, Price Range, and Brand filters out of the box. Toggle each on for the storefronts and category pages where you want it to appear. No plug-ins, no add-on licensing.
3
Flag attributes “Use as Catalog Filter”
On any product Attribute, set “Use as Catalog Filter” to true and the storefront will automatically generate a new filter facet for that attribute: Voltage, Material, Compliance Class, Diameter, Color, anything you track on a product. The facet auto-populates with the distinct values present in your indexed SKUs.
4
Configure keyword aliases / synonyms
Add synonym groups (“wrench / spanner,” “hex / Allen,” “PN / part number,” legacy SKU → current SKU) so the Elastic Search query expands matches across the way every buyer actually types. Configure per language and per storefront where you operate multi-region.
5
Wire Price Range to customer tier
The Price Range filter respects the logged-in customer's contracted prices, not list. A buyer on Tier B sees Tier-B prices in the slider and filters against those numbers. This is the B2B differentiator versus consumer-grade catalog search, and it works the moment Customer-Specific Pricing is configured.
6
Set sort orders and page size
Configure default sort orders (Relevance, Price Low → High, Price High → Low, Rating, Newest, Best Sellers) and pagination size. Buyers can override per session in the storefront, and their preference is remembered for the duration of the visit.
7
Test faceted navigation with live counts
Walk a category page and watch filter counts update live as you stack facets. A buyer narrowing Category → Brand → Voltage → Price Range sees the result count tick down at every step, so they never click into an empty page. Validate that synonyms expand correctly and that the Price Range slider shows the right buyer's tier.
Benefits & business impact: what catalog search built for B2B actually delivers.
Getting Advanced Search right doesn't just polish the catalog UX. It changes how often buyers find what they came for, how much your sales desk gets paged for “can't find it” calls, and how confident the catalog feels at scale.
Higher search-to-cart conversion
Synonym expansion, dynamic facets, and live filter counts mean fewer empty result pages and fewer abandoned sessions. Buyers who found the right product the first time are buyers who didn't need to call the sales desk to find it.
Honest price filtering
A contract buyer's slider operates against their contract prices, not list. The catalog never hides product they could actually afford, and the buyer trusts what they see. That trust translates into orders placed online instead of calls to the sales desk.
Industry-specific filtering with no dev cost
Configurable-Attribute filters mean an electrical distributor ships a Voltage filter, a plumbing supply ships a Diameter filter, and a medical reseller ships a Compliance-Class filter. Same platform for all three, no code required.
Catalog visibility for long-tail SKUs
Faceted navigation surfaces product that keyword search alone would miss. A buyer who lands on Category, then Brand, then Voltage discovers SKUs they never would have typed a query for. That browsing path is exactly how distributor catalogs grow share-of-wallet.
Index stays in step with the ERP
Because product data, prices, and category assignments flow through Clarity Connect from your ERP / PIM, the Elastic Search index never drifts. New SKUs appear, retired SKUs disappear, repriced contracts re-rank, all without anyone touching the storefront.
Sales-desk call volume drops
Every “can't find it” call your sales desk takes is a search that should have worked. Synonyms, dynamic facets, and tier-aware pricing remove the three or four reasons most of those calls happen, freeing your sales team to focus on real selling.
The personas who benefit span every side of the catalog: buyers find the SKU they came for on the first or second search instead of the fifth, procurement teams filter against the contract prices they actually pay, not list, sales desks field fewer “can't find it” calls and more real questions, catalog managers ship new filter facets by flagging an attribute instead of opening a ticket, and your storefront analytics finally show you which facets buyers actually use, so you can tune the catalog to match the way your customers shop.
Frequently asked questions
What is Advanced Search in Clarity eCommerce?
Advanced Search is the Elastic Search-backed catalog search and faceted filtering system in the Clarity eCommerce Framework. Buyers can type a keyword query, narrow results with six out-of-the-box filter facets (Search Terms, Product Rating, Category, Custom Attribute, Price Range, Brand), and stack additional dynamically-generated facets driven by Configurable Attributes flagged “Use as Catalog Filter.” The Price Range filter is customer-tier-aware: it filters against the logged-in buyer's contracted prices, not the list price. That is the B2B differentiator versus consumer-grade carts.
What are the six out-of-the-box filter facets?
Per the platform's included filter options: Search Terms, Product Rating, Category, Custom Attribute, Price Range, and Brand. Search Terms is the free-text keyword query. Product Rating filters by aggregated review score. Category narrows to a node in the up-to-seven-tier category tree. Custom Attribute is the umbrella for dynamically-generated facets fed by Configurable Attributes. Price Range filters against the customer's contracted prices. Brand groups by manufacturer. Every one of these works without custom development.
How do Configurable Attributes generate new filter facets?
Attributes in the Clarity eCommerce Framework drive specific functions based on their settings. One of those settings is “Use as Catalog Filter.” Flag an attribute (Voltage, Material, Compliance Class, Diameter, Color) with that setting and the storefront automatically renders a new filter facet on the catalog and category pages, populated with the distinct values present in your indexed products. You can ship a brand-new filter without writing a line of code, and the same mechanism powers Product-Compare and Product-Details page display.
How does the Price Range filter handle contracted pricing?
The Price Range filter respects the logged-in customer's contracted prices, not the list price. If a buyer's Account is tagged with Tier B pricing or a specific contract, the slider min / max and the filter bounds reflect Tier-B prices for the products in scope. A buyer on a 30% contract discount filtering “under $500” means under their $500, not under list's $500. Consumer-grade carts that filter on list miss products the buyer could actually afford at contract.
How do keyword aliases and synonyms work?
Elastic Search supports synonym groups so the same query expands across the way different buyers actually type. A search for “wrench” can also match “spanner”. “hex” matches “Allen”. “PN-12345” matches a legacy part number that the ERP migrated away from years ago. Synonym handling is essential in B2B because the same SKU is searched a dozen different ways across regions, generations of buyers, and merged-acquired catalogs.
How does faceted navigation with live category counts work?
As a buyer stacks filters (Category, then Brand, then Voltage, then Price Range) the count next to every remaining facet value updates live to reflect how many products would still match if they added it. The buyer never wastes a click landing on an empty page. They see exactly which filters will narrow further and which would zero out the result set. Pagination and sort orders run on top, so the buyer can re-sort by Price, Rating, Newest, or Best Sellers at any point.
Does Advanced Search work with the ERP / PIM as the system of truth?
Yes. Product data, categories, attribute values, brands, and contracted prices typically originate in the ERP or PIM (SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Sage, Acumatica, Epicor, Infor, SYSPRO, and 17+ more) and flow into the Clarity eCommerce catalog through Clarity Connect. The Elastic Search index sits in front of that catalog, so the storefront stays fast and queryable while the back-end systems remain authoritative. Update a price or a category in the ERP, and the storefront facets reflect it.
Related features
FeatureProduct Catalog, the catalog UX that Advanced Search drives
FeatureSEO & Marketing, SEO-friendly URLs, sitemaps, and category metadata
See it with your catalog
Bring your catalog. Walk away with a working Advanced Search preview.
Schedule a 30-minute walkthrough and we'll show Advanced Search running against a sandbox of your own SKUs and attribute values: the six OOTB facets live, Configurable-Attribute filters generated from your data, synonyms wired to how your buyers search, and the Price Range slider operating against contracted prices for a sample tier. Elastic backend, live facet counts, configurable sort orders. Already built in.
