Hi!
Thank you very much for your kind words, I greatly appriceate them.
You can use the search shortcode as a menu item. I usually not recommend doing this in most cases, as menus are uniquely built each, and sometimes it can be very difficult to get the layout/functionality to work. You should definitely try it, it may work properly.
You could make a filter like this or this one. There is a tutorial available on how to create the first one. You will have to experiment with the options a lot first, but once you get the hang of it, it should get easier 🙂
To understand the most of those options, you can read up on the documentation, under these chapters.
The best thing you can do for us, is to rate the plugin codecanyon downloads page, it’s greatly appreciated.
Let me know if you need any more help!