The challenge

In the online retail industry, search plays a pivotal role in ensuring customers find the product that’s right for them. Unfortunately, giving customers even a baseline of relevant search results was a dare for Linio — multiple teams had to get involved and hack together various backend processes. Any change, large or small, was a huge undertaking. 

Making matters worse, the third-party search tool that Linio had been using didn’t give all the visibility and control on the ranking logic/search ranking algorithm they need. As a result, Linio’s team felt completely powerless. How could developers make improvements to their search experience without understanding how it was configured?

The solution

Tired of the lack of transparency with its previous third-party tool, Linio turned to Algolia. “Search used to be a black box. We had no visibility on how our provider was running things, and even the smallest changes would take 3 weeks to implement,” said Maritza Cartaya, a Search Product Manager at Linio. 

With Algolia, Linio finally had a stable search tool that could handle its traffic as the company grew. But the biggest improvements Linio saw were in flexibility. The team was able to control changes, customize search, and create smart query rules. Better yet, all of these changes became possible to do without help from engineering. The marketing team was excited to have the ability to implement changes — like boosting new SKUs, for example — all by themselves. 

And the Linio team quickly saw that Algolia does so much more than search—it has also helped them uncover new business opportunities and become an instrumental piece of their merchandising toolkit. Now, the marketing and commercial teams are able to search for new sellers, then offer to help those sellers boost their items for brand campaigns. “Since we’ve started using Algolia, the difference has been night and day. Algolia has uncovered new business opportunities and become a great merchandising tool. ” said Cartaya.

The result

Algolia’s user-friendly documentation and customer service team empowered Linio’s nontechnical employees. “We have all been surprised at how easy and flawless the whole process has been. It’s truly an empowering product and tool,” said Cartaya. 

But Algolia hasn’t just given Linio’s internal teams a boost, it has also helped the business’s sales. Search results with zero results decreased by 20%. 

“We love all the features Algolia launches and want to implement them as soon as possible,” said Angela Bedoya, Product Manager at Linio.