The search engine is an extremely important part of an online store. For many it is the primary driver of product discovery, and users who search have a higher conversion rate than users who do not. The choice of search technology is therefore not one to take lightly. Our preferred best-of-breed solution is the SaaS solution Algolia.
Algolia, in brief
The company was founded in France in 2012 with the idea of creating immediate and relevant search and discovery experiences. Today the company is the market leader for larger businesses and has a global presence. Algolia processes 1.5 trillion searches per year, which is 6 times more than Microsoft Bing and 16 times more than Yahoo, and their technology is used by one in eight internet users.
Simply put, the company reduces the need for online visitors (using any web, mobile, or voice device) to unnecessarily search for information, by finding the desired information in as short a time as possible. When you achieve this, you win the hearts, minds, and trust of your customers.
By using AI and machine learning, Algolia's Search and Recommend APIs make it possible to understand user intent, enabling businesses to personalize experiences and offers, even from the very first visit and first search. This allows businesses to move beyond content-based search toward predictive, intent-based experiences.
Search, navigation, and recommendations are so much more than just a search box or a carousel showing a page of results. It is about delivering immediate satisfaction. It is about generating maximum value from every interaction in a very short time. It is about reducing friction. When you show a person the item they are looking for within milliseconds, you create satisfaction. And that turns into trust.
The Total Economic Impact of Algolia
Algolia commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying its Search and Discovery platform.
Best-of-breed search engine
Algolia has been our preferred search engine since 2016, when we fell completely in love with the lightning-fast SaaS service. Since then it has been our recommended search engine, implemented and optimized across 40+ B2C and B2B clients in combination with Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce, and SAP Commerce Cloud. Today Algolia is a key partner and important component in our Maestro framework and Composable Commerce strategy, working in harmony with other services such as Commercetools and Dynamic Yield, to name a few.
"We helped Maxbo double the conversion rate for searching users through an optimization project for the Algolia search engine configuration."
Advantages of using Algolia's AI search
- Lightning-fast search
- Covers both header search and adapts category listings and filtering based on results
- A strong API that makes the service integrable with a wide range of ecommerce platforms and services
- Gives you insight into on-site search behavior that you can act on directly from a dedicated dashboard
- Highly configurable, so you can optimize the search service continuously on your own
- Personalization that surfaces results for each individual user based on their behavior
- AI and machine learning that picks up trends and influences results based on behavior, and can boost new popular products
- Dynamic synonym generation with AI, so not all synonyms need to be created manually