If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If you're using this phrase to describe the search experience on your Adobe Commerce site, you're missing out on one of the biggest revolutions in ecommerce technology. In ecommerce, things are changing all the time. Especially customer expectations.

In just a few years, machine learning and generative Al have rocked the ecommerce boat in exciting and groundbreaking ways. It's helping businesses work more efficiently and faster. But it's also revolutionizing the way customers interact with websites and products.

When customers visit an ecommerce store, they often compare their experiences to the world's most powerful, evergreen sites.

The likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix surface what customers need in record-breaking time. They've been using large language models to intuit customer preferences earlier than anyone else and to deliver personalized customer service and on-the-spot recommendations.

This is the new baseline that ecommerce sites need to deliver to every customer.

Business and merchandising teams may be accustomed to the search functionality provided on Adobe Commerce. Having a no-frills search tool that's ready to go is rightfully valued by businesses just starting out with search. However, businesses can get more out of Adobe Commerce with an upgrade to advanced search and discovery tools designed to work with the Adobe stack like Algolia.

This eBook is a primer on the value of advanced search for driving growth on Adobe Commerce. We explain what advanced search is, how it brings uplift to Adobe Commerce stores and why it's a worthwhile investment in terms of performance, customer experience, and ROl.

 

It's not enough to "check the box" on search

Retailers aiming to grow profitability online know search is the most powerful tool in their sales arsenal. It's foundational. Ecommerce can't exist without search. It's the cornerstone of the interaction between businesses and their online customers.

Adobe Commerce comes bundled with a search tool for good reason. Retail customers need ways to find products and discover more in a business's catalog. Live Search gets sites up and running and customers off to a good start.

But like any Saas service, the freemium starter package lacks functionality.

The drawbacks of free search

While Live Search is an improvement on Adobe's earlier tool, Magento Free, it remains a rudimentary search platform.

Live Search is great for beginners and offers a limited set of advanced features including search-as-you-type capability, dynamic faceting, synonyms, and relevance rules. It's powered by Adobe Sensei, which provides some Al capability.

But it only works across Adobe Commerce data, which limits the potential accuracy, relevance, and scope of search results. It can take up to 15 minutes to display new indexed content and lacks transparency, which is a serious weakness for Al. If you don't know how search results are determined, how can you fine-tune the process to improve it?

Free search is attractive. But retailers with bigger and longer game plans are wasting time building their search strategy around Live Search. For that, you need sophisticated tools that demand less heavy lifting from your teams and your customers and are designed to work with Adobe Commerce to drive clicks and conversions.

 

Overlook search at your own risk

Advanced search is an investment that drives revenue. 

When the goal is more revenue, advanced search delivers the conversion power. Whether the gains are from speed, a better customer experience or understanding user intent with Al, advanced search tools deliver measurable bang and bring in more bucks:

• Advanced search and discovery capabilities deliver 382% ROI (Forrester)
• Effective search personalization earn companies 40% more revenue (McKinsey)
• Delivering mobile search results 100 milliseconds faster resulted in 8.4% more conversions (Deloitte)

More benefits of advanced search - and signs you need it

Advanced search offers multiple pathways to those revenue gains. If you're contemplating improvements like these to drive engagement and conversions on Adobe Commerce, you want:

• Faster search results and real-time indexing
• More control over search result ranking and relevancy
• Transparency over Al-powered search results, to tune, test, and drive outcomes
• A flexible, scalable API-first solution that works with Adobe and non-Adobe technology as your SKU count grows and your stack evolves
• Search to cover products and other content (FAQ, blogs, manuals) from Adobe and other services

If you're not sure you can achieve these with Live Search, you're limiting your revenue potential.

 

Leveraging Adobe for contextualized search

Contextualized search foregoes all "one-size-fits-all" presumptions and builds every search experience from the ground up, based on search data from across your Adobe stack. That data is carefully weighed and measured to surface products store visitors are most likely to love - and to purchase.

Contextualized search builds that experience dynamically to surface the right product for the right person at the right time — just because it's Halloween doesn't mean everyone wants pumpkin-flavored treats.

Here's an example based on event, segment, and search data for a grocery retailer. A customer in the "Mom" and "Discount Lover" segment who purchased chocolate in store, clicked Instagram ads for hot chocolate mix and is now typing "sale" into the search toolbar.

This business's data shows they've searched for pumpkin-flavored products before, but never converted.

In our example, data predicts that a chocolate promotion will appeal more to this shopper than a deal on pumpkin-spiced cookies. Geographic and stock availability data rounds out the experience by surfacing items that are available right here, right now.

Contextualized search is far more than search. It's the engine that helps surface results, drive ads and build a sales campaign for this customer at this exact moment.

Level up to experience-driven commerce

When 100% of data is discoverable, search takes more event data into account, so retailers can learn who customers are and anticipate what they want.

Contextualized search leverages that data to provide dynamic, individualized search results that drive conversions:

• Run relevant banners triggered by search
• Boost products using one-to-one personalization
• Surface results that are in stock at the nearest location
• Offer promotions on products likely to convert

 

Algolia and Adobe: a partnership that drives ecommerce growth

Algolia provides a flexible option for Adobe customers using search to drive ecommerce growth. Without Algolia, ecommerce businesses see an average conversion rate of 2.58%. When they deploy Algolia, that rate jumps to 3.48%. That's a 35% conversion rate uplift from the advanced search capability of Algolia.

Faster, flexible, and federated

An API-first solution like Algolia helps Adobe customers craft an impeccable search and navigation experience on their storefronts. Here's how Algolia delivers speed, scalability, and compatibility - all in service of conversion uplift:

• Faster performance, better Ul: instant search-as-you-type results, real-time indexing and inventory updates, Ul customizations
• Federated search: make all types of content searchable from your Adobe Commerce store to provide a richer, more engaging discovery experience
• Easy integration: connect seamlessly with your Adobe Commerce product catalog and categories
• Flexibility: integrate to any architecture, host on any cloud, power search on any front-end (Adobe Commerce storefront, PWA or headless stack, Adobe Experience Manager)
• Control and transparency: optimize relevance for keyword and long-tail queries, run A/B testing for merchandising and Al-powered ranking

These are superb benefits overall, but the biggest advantage of Algolia for Adobe customers is how it leverages the Adobe stack. It's designed for easy integration across the Adobe ecosystem to provide best-in-class contextualized search.

Designed for the Adobe stack

Algolia draws on metrics and content from other Adobe services to generate business insights and elevate search results. Unlike Live Search, which is limited to products, federated search lets you access every data point you need to power search relevancy and product recommendations.

Use Algolia to:

• Rank content based on metrics from Adobe Analytics
• Boost products and personalize content based on user events from Adobe Launch and user segments from Adobe Customer Data Platform (CDP)
• Use business rules, Al-driven ranking and recommendations to optimize content on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

 

Algolia recommendations for Adobe Commerce

Optimizing search isn't the end of the story. Product recommendations are a key part of experience-driven commerce.

They help shoppers discover and fall in love with items they're unaware of or to find substitutes when you're sold out.

They drive engagement and revenue, too. Take it from some of the biggest names that consumers engage with. Netflix reports that 80% of viewers are watching recommended content. Amazon attributes 35% of purchases to product recommendations.

Three steps to set up Algolia recommendations

The first step is to bring demographic and event data, including clicks, conversions, and past search data, into your Adobe Commerce integration.

Second, train your recommendation model using the Algolia dashboard. Customize your recommendation results using rules and preview the customer journey by running results simulations.

Third, add the "recommend" modules to your product pages.

When customers visit your storefront and see "Related Products," "Frequently Bought Together" and "Trending" suggestions tailored to their preferences, they're more likely to interact - and add them to their shopping cart.

Algolia recommendations are easy to set up and proven to increase conversion rate and basket size.

Algolia recommendations employ a blend of machine and human learning to determine "rules" that provide the best results. In contrast to Adobe Live Search, the process is transparent. Users retain control over how things are set up. Your merchandising team could choose to limit recommendations to categories that make sense for your storefront, such as brands, colors, or price points.

 

Why Algolia is the best search for Adobe Commerce enterprises

Adobe Commerce retailers at the enterprise level have more complex and sophisticated search requirements — all best met with Algolia.

Get specialized solutions for your B2B use case

Algolia has the real-time indexing capacity to accommodate inventory and pricing changes over huge indexes and catalogs. Access management lets retailers manage complicated product assortments and keep track of customer entitlements. Relevance tuning controls return exact matches on SKUs to save everyone time.

Get unified search and flexible architecture

Algolia's API-first solution lets retailers federate search results across all Adobe services, plus external sources, to deliver a comprehensive search experience.

Merchandising teams can leverage Adobe Launch events to power trending and personalized search results. Front-end Ul components are also customizable to suit your business and customer needs.

Get enterprise-level speed and scale

Enterprises around the world need sophisticated search solutions that grow with them. With Algolia, teams can manage search at scale across brands, stores, and languages. In-depth analytics give insights into search performance and conversion rates and the tools to fine-tune Al and A/B test business and search outcomes.

Enterprise successes with advanced search from Algolia

Adobe Commerce drives the transactional experience and Algolia search and personalization capabilities improve product finding and discoverability.

Construction tools and workwear supplier Swedol needed a more flexible and refined B2B search experience on Adobe Commerce that was easy to implement and use.

Faster indexing by Algolia's API-driven search and easy-to-use dashboards improved product management and made sure the right B2B customers saw the right product assortments.

26% more time on site
22% higher conversion rate

 

Drive growth with the world's leading ecommerce search solution

Checking the search box on Adobe Commerce is easy. But when competitors are leveraging technologies to keep customers engrossed, visiting, and buying, overlooking the advanced potential of search is a business risk.

It's time to join the 1,600 Adobe merchants already exploring contextualized search and getting conversion rate uplift with search and discovery from Algolia.

Double your retail power with search from an Adobe Gold Partner

Algolia is that proven search partner for retailers that depend on Adobe for reliable and unwavering ecommerce support. We process over 140 billion search queries per month for more than 17,000 organizations worldwide.

Our high-availability platform with 99.999% SLA delivers results in under 20 ms with unparalleled relevance, precision, and personalization.

Algolia is your one-stop-shop for Al-powered search. Retailers needing speed, flexibility, control, and room to grow can feel confident adding Algolia to their Adobe stack. It's easy to integrate, compatible with B2B modules, and perfectly complements a headless architecture.

Do more, grow more on Adobe Commerce

Algolia gives business, merchandising, and developer teams the APls, dashboards, and analytical tools needed for experience-driven commerce. Satisfied customers spend more time on site, click more and convert more.

1,600+ Adobe Commerce retailers choose Algolia