SmartBuyGlasses and Algolia: Striving to deliver an extraordinary customer experience together

SmartBuyGlasses is one of the world’s largest designer eyewear e-commerce companies, with a presence across Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. With more than 15 years of experience in the industry, the eyewear e-retailer has taken a leadership position in more than 30 countries worldwide and offers an extensive range of eyeglasses, sunglasses, and contact lenses at accessible prices. 

Its mission: To help people see and be healthy regardless of their budget. . A mission achieved through an integrated supply chain, close relationships with some of the world’s leading eyewear distributors, technological innovation, in-house opticians, and careful consideration of their customers’ needs. 

The company’s website provides an interactive and personalized alternative to purchasing prescription lenses, designer eyewear, and contact lenses. To that end, SmartBuyGlasses endeavors to make every shopping experience fun, fast, and easy. 

“We aim to provide a superior experience by offering high-quality eyewear and great value to our customers,” says Tony Zhuang, CIO at SmartBuyGlasses Optical Group. “We achieve this through our expertise, technology know-how, and professional services.” 

Zhuang and Head of Digital Product Development Gaëtan Girin have a continuous focus on how to use technology to improve conversion rates and website performance — with a strategic effort to provide timely and delightful support to the customers. 

Collaboration is key, Girin states. “Every day is different, working on new features involving all the teams at SmartBuyGlasses: marketing, IT, supply chain, merchandising, logistics, customer service, and more.”

The pressing need to improve search

In its early days, Sary used a simple, open source search solution. The minimalistic approach created several problems, including questions of discovery quality, issues around keyword searches, and challenges around understanding customer intent. 

“There were a lot of problems around the customer experience for discovery, and that was the genesis of our search for a better solution,” Binghannam says. 

They found a better solution in the form of Algolia Search. The company adopted the platform across all its applications and channels for search and discovery, making use of the full suite of Algolia features: Rules, AI synonyms, Dynamic Re-ranking, Personalization, and, most recently, Recommend. 

Sary deployed the first phase of its Algolia implementation, keyword search, in just two months using in-house resources, and continuously built iteratively upon it, adding new features, capabilities, and use cases. Of course, Algolia’s customer support team was always there to help. 

Today, Algolia is being used for product-specific searches powered by keyword search capabilities, category searches to improve product discovery, to provide product recommendations, and, on the company’s backend, where internal teams use it to boost and promote specific products.

“We’ve had a lot of interactions with the Algolia customer support and technology support teams..Our experience has been exceptional. We have always received the answers we need, and promptly.” ─ Abdulaziz Binghannam, Head of Engineering, Sary Technologies

Winning in a fast-changing market

The improved search capabilities, enhanced customer experience, and better understanding of consumer behavior that Algolia brings have helped SmartBuyGlasses as the eyewear market has seen considerable change. 

In recent years it has had to adapt to new innovations in online technology, such as Virtual Try-on (VTO), and a substantial increase in organic traffic during the pandemic. Also, over that time the concept of success has shifted from winning market share to measurably improving customer experience. 

“The biggest obstacles to winning in our business are more on internal factors like lack of resources and management strategies. To overcome these obstacles, we need to develop new strategies, invest in new technologies and processes, and improve our organizational culture towards focusing on improving our customer experience,” Zhuang says. 

To that end, Algolia A/B Testing is helping the company track the user experience and revenue impact of key changes it makes, empowering the management team to make better informed, data-driven decisions. 

Meanwhile, Algolia’s analytics provides insights that help the Digital team identify opportunities to continually improve the search experience on SmartBuyGlasses websites and provide users with fast and relevant answers.

How fast and relevant?

The company found that Algolia Search significantly improved the accuracy and speed of its site search and grid page, resulting in a 20 percent increase in click-through rate and a 10 percent reduction in no-click rates. 

But it’s not just the speed, relevancy, and customer experience gains that have the SmartBuyGlasses Digital team singing Algolia’s praises, but also the high level of service and support they receive — and the impact it has had on their search platform. 

“We work closely with Algolia’s product specialists to find the best way to continuously optimize our search technology. Algolia’s support team acts more like an external consultant than a software provider to us,” Girin says.

In addition to “first-class services” from the Algolia support team, having been using Algolia for approximately eight years, Girin praises the continued development and upgrade of the company roadmap. 

“The Algolia solution has evolved and added many features and technologies in recent years that have helped us further improve our search functionality.”