As a default feature, WordPress allows you to add search functionality to your site’s footer, sidebar and other widget-ready spaces. But, many people prefer having search boxes on their navigation menus.
Search bars make it simple for users to locate the information they’re seeking without having to leave the WordPress website. It improves the user experience and increases engagement.
This is why many website experts and designers recommend including a search feature within the navigation menu to make it easy for users to find it.
There are a variety of various WordPress search plugins that allow you to add the search bar to various areas on your website, including navigation menus.
In this tutorial, we’ll use the SearchWP Modal Search Form plugin. It’s simple to use, looks fantastic in any style, and doesn’t affect the performance of your site.
Let’s look at how you can include a search bar in the WordPress navigation menu.
Adding a Search Bar to WordPress Navigation Menu
The first thing to do is to set up and then activate the WordPress plugin.
After activation, go to the Appearance tab and select Menus to include the search page in the WordPress menu. When you are there, ensure you choose the primary menu.
Then, click SearchWP Modal Search Forms to view the settings menu. You can observe that the plugin has already added the default search ‘Native WordPress’. template.
Choose ‘Native WordPress’, then click the ‘Add to menu button.
WordPress has added the brand-new Native WordPress Modal Search Form in the column to the right.
It’s a good idea to change the navigation label to ‘Search’, so that your users know it’s a search field. After that, click the Save menu button to save the changes.
Go to the front-end, and you’ll notice the new Search bar on your navigation menu.
The search box will consider the style of your WordPress theme, which is great.
Adding Ajax-Powered Live Search
It is possible to make your search form more user-friendly by incorporating live search results with Ajax. This will show the user relevant results from the search while they type their query, similar to what you can see on Google.
The first step is to download and then activate this WordPress plugin.
After activation, the plugin will integrate live search on all your forms without the need to set any settings.
To experience how you can experience the live Ajax search live, just go to the WordPress website and enter a search term. The results of your search will pop up when you start typing.
And that’s it, hope this helped.
