Faceted navigation

Hello, I’m Davila. In this video, I’m going to show you how Squiz Search lets you create intuitive filters so your end users can easily navigate large sets of search results.

Many search solutions require developers to set up filters. But with Squiz, users are provided with a non-technical interface to manage the faceted navigation presented on your search pages. This allows you to create dynamic filters tailored to your needs.

We’ll start by looking at this search results interface. It’s currently returning results for the search term “business.” As you can see, there are many results, which can make it difficult for users to quickly find the content they need at the start of their search experience.

So let’s go back and create a new facet to help users narrow down the results.

Creating a facet through this interface is simple. First, you choose the facet template you want to start with. In this case, I’ll filter on a single category. I’ll give it a title, then define which category I want users to filter on. I’ll select a department metadata field that I already have in my index.

I’ll save this, then return to the search results screen and refresh it.

Now you can see there is structure applied to the results. The large number of results feels much more manageable when users can filter by a specific department. The facet box can be expanded or collapsed, and result counts are shown to help users filter quickly and efficiently.

Next, I’ll create another facet.

If you want to organise content while also improving layout, you can also create tabs to help users navigate different categories. I have several high-value sections on the site, so I’ll create tabs including an “All Results” tab so everything is still accessible in one place.

Then I’ll separate content into sections based on URL patterns. For example, I have an events section on the website, so I’ll label a tab “Events.” I also have a news section, so I’ll add a “News” tab as well.

Now let’s look at the tabs on the page.

As you can see, this gives users a quick overview of the main content types—such as Events and News—and allows them to navigate between them easily. They can also see the number of results in each section, and icons can be added to improve clarity and usability.

There are many more filtering options available, including audience-based filters using radio buttons, filtering by different data sources, specific queries, or even custom logic.

To see how Squiz can help you build more powerful navigation and search experiences, book a demo with our team.