Search - find - buy - be happy
Fast and smart - that's how we want to find the right products and solutions. Especially in B2B commerce, where efficiency is key. mindcurv and Inwerk show how this works using modern, intelligent, cloud-based solutions - and how to quickly find the perfect office furniture from millions of variants.
Starting situation: okay
Inwerk, the leading online provider of office furniture, had a search based on Elastic Search that had not kept pace with its requirements: the setting options were limited and the speed did not fulfil the requirements. For a company whose core business is e-commerce, there was a need for action. A situation that many commerce companies will be familiar with.
The right choice
Together with Inwerk, we have therefore opted for a new, modern search: it should be cloud-based and high-performance - and above all equipped with functions that support e-commerce. Algolia was the obvious choice.
Algolia is a structured search that, once supplied with data, can be configured in many ways by the "business user" without having to involve developers (e.g. with the help of a real-time preview).
Solid craftsmanship and fine art
In the first phase, we set up the Algolia search. To do so, we established data interfaces between D365 as the ERP, Shopware as the shop and Algolia, followed by the development of an Inwerk-specific front end based on React. It took us just a few weeks to take this first step towards a beta phase. We then iteratively optimised the search results through control & configuration. So Inwerk customers were able to find what they were looking for quickly and easily.
Fast and smart
Phase 2 started after more than a year of operation: user-specific data (user behaviour tracking) is now collected with "Algolia Insights" in conjunction with Google Tag Manager. This provides a more targeted analysis and therefore better customisation to the actual needs of clients. The data will directly control search optimisation and generate individually tailored results and recommendations, also based on AI-supported algorithms. Inwerk customers will now not only find what they are looking for, but even what they didn't dare to look for: solutions to their problems that they didn't know about before.
The search currently runs with over 100,000 queries per month and is highly performant with a response time of approx. 3 ms.