What should a company do when faced with a hellish challenge? The forces of nature in the form of pandemics, war, and unemployment that no one warned about. However, contracts with contractors and employee payments remain just as relevant – and one must fight an unequal battle against the circumstances.
This is a story about the Bushido code in the market. Also about the organic transformation of a business, the art of working in turbulent times, and the support of Multisearch in the battle against chaos.
How it all started
The first offline store in Kyiv appeared back in 1994. One could say that IBIS were pioneers in their field in independent Ukraine. Over time, one store grew into a whole network and the gradual transition to digital took place.
With the appearance of the online store, the IBIS team worked actively on setting up the internal search. It took 3 years to create the basic search mechanics, and 6 years to improve the Sphinx search module.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
The product catalog appeared on the website in 2011, and sales started in May 2012.
At that time, we were all learning, and I, in particular, was learning a lot.
At first, the search only found items based on direct matching of the search word and the product name; in other cases, nothing was found.
Stage 1. Adventures with name-based search
People regularly made mistakes, so they often couldn't find products rather than finding them.
The main issues included:
- writing in Cyrillic
- grammatical errors
- declensions of search terms
At that time, the IBIS team implemented a log of search queries that returned no results. This helped to see what visitors were searching for but could not find.
The most common mistakes involved transcriptions.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
We manually wrote synonyms and replacements for common but grammatically incorrect queries. It was like a manual neural network.
We had a whole glossary of search query replacements from incorrect to correct spelling, for example:
Blazer = Blaser
Mauzer = Mauser
German and other non-English names were always written with mistakes.
Among the search queries, there were also quite amusing variations: shocker/shockar, taser/tizer/tazer. Fishermen's queries like "makukha" and "worms" often brought a smile, as well as interpretations of foreign brand names. For example, trying to input the brand name Zojirushi in Cyrillic and all caps resulted in "ЗОЖИРУЧІ" or "ЗОЖИРАШИ".
We had to put ourselves in the users' shoes and predict the logic behind their mistakes. Manually updating the search query database often took a whole day. However, IBIS never gave up hope of improving the algorithms on their own.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
Everything we could do with our own resources – synonyms, auto-replacements – we did. At the same time, the Russian semantics were still present before the shift to Ukrainian. We started earlier than it became mainstream, but still, Russian-language searches were several times more frequent than Ukrainian ones. Now, that has changed.
Stage 2. Mind-blowing search by indexes
Next, the company expanded the semantics of the search. So, the "search by names" smoothly transitioned into "search by indexes." After all, the search bar was used not only by customers but also by staff.
Employees used the website as a reference tool to quickly find products by their codes. Keeping track of around 1,070 products in one's head is impossible, especially when there are new team members who need to quickly orient themselves within the assortment.
It wasn't uncommon for a customer to ask about a product that had run out on the shelf but was still available online. This is a typical story for stores that have transitioned from offline to online sales.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
This basic search existed not only for regular customers but also for B2B and internal use. With a team of 1,000 people in the company, we generated tremendous traffic, along with dealers in the region who used our website for wholesale orders.
Index-based search also allowed for a quick review of the description. For example, if a customer was interested in a Spiderco Shaman knife and mentioned the code, the seller could always refresh their memory about the product's features: steel type, blade length, or handle shape. Or provide information on usage and maintenance.
Stage 3. Manual search query analysis
The next step for IBIS was gathering data on lost products.
They created a summary table with results, categorizing the search log into 3 groups:
- Popularly found (what was most frequently searched and found).
- Found without clicks (what was found but deemed irrelevant).
- Not found (what was searched for but not found at all).
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
We didn't measure percentages, but we had a ranking table for "queries without results" with the number of occurrences.
For example, the first place had 21,000 queries, the second had 21,300, and the third had 20,963. Below in the ranking were some 1,000-1,800 queries.
So, there's what people are constantly searching for and not finding, and there's what they don't search for constantly but still can't find. These are different entities.
Interesting fact: The "not found" category showed that most of the queries were not related to the store's assortment. Website visitors were constantly searching for products that weren't available. This allowed the team to analyze demand and adjust the search results to show similar products that were in stock.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
For example, you came to our site, typed "Tisa," and we interpreted this search as "Savage Gear" because we have a brand that is an alternative to Tisa. So, we redirected the query. However, we didn’t measure the redirected query's success: did the customer buy our alternative, or did they continue searching? It would have been interesting to know.
However, regardless of the conversion rate for alternative queries, such an approach would help reduce customer frustration. After all, the store can never know for sure how crucial the brand is to a customer. It's always better to see several alternative options in the search results than to read the cold "not found."
The Period of Trials and Transformations
The store always enhanced its on-site search with its own resources. The team used its own strategies and managed to complete tasks — there was no urgent need for external help.
The Sphinx module gradually worked, and they had already added:
- a dictionary of synonyms and variations in spelling;
- a sorting logic for search results;
- redirects from competing products to their analogs.
While the business was organically growing, the world faced global challenges.
Working During the Pandemic and War
During the crisis period, it became clear that the search needed significant improvement. The first sharp realization came during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
During the years of the pandemic, we essentially covered the entire B2C commercial direction with online retail, as all stores were closed. Our traffic increased fivefold, causing a collapse. That's when the weak points became evident
Then came the war. Although the demand for online shopping grew rapidly in the first six months, the issue of improving the search was pushed to the back burner. The team worked without days off, and the workload on employees was enormous.
If a person couldn't find something on the website, they would call or write to the company's chat. Essentially, the staff was doing what an intelligent search could do. However, all this required constantly keeping information about product availability and details in mind while juggling numerous other tasks.
The priority shifted to providing instant assistance rather than tracking sales statistics or the average check. The store's main goal was to properly address the query: helping customers understand the differences between products they were inquiring about.
Over time, the pressure eased a little, and the crisis experience once again confirmed the need to optimize human resources and improve the site's search algorithms.
How Multisearch Helped
In September 2022, smart search was implemented. The integration took 1-2 months, including testing and adjustments.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
In our first year working with Multisearch, we had a 500% workload. We were in agony for half a year and were genuinely grateful for any help that automated even a small part of what people used to do.
The tools that IBIS Company initially implemented manually were later realized with the help of smart search. Most tasks that used to involve employees are now solved automatically.
The main problems of the IBIS online store were solved by Multisearch's basic functionality. This includes 10 key features, such as correcting typos, recognizing keyboard layouts, and synonyms (both general and specific to a niche). This set of settings is suitable for any website with a search bar. Moreover, the addition of extra features allowed the search to handle slang, affectionate terms, and analyze conversions.
What Did This Result In?
Let’s analyze the first month after implementing Multisearch. We’ll look at Google Organic traffic without contextual ads to exclude the influence of factors not dependent on search, such as advertising campaigns that directly lead users to products, bypassing the search bar.
The graph showed:
- The audience from search, despite a slight increase in traffic (7%), generated 65% more profit than the previous month.
- The overall traffic income without search grew by 42%.
- The transaction conversion rate increased by almost 20%, compared to 7% in total traffic.
- The session value increased to 55%, compared to 33% in total traffic.
Bonus Advantage of Smart Search
An interesting outcome during tough times was the combination of intelligent search and advertising.
The store has its own YouTube channel — “IBIS Reviews.” The content of the video platform systematically boosted the knife categories and developed audiences.
The category that showed the highest online sales among others was folding knives.
The surge in activity was quite lively: in terms of views, subscriptions, and confirmed sales through promo codes.
Thus, Multisearch decided to explore whether the integration of smart search directly influenced the number of sales.
We analyzed one of the popular queries after integrating smart algorithms. We sorted IBIS store queries by the keywords "knife" and "knives." The graph showed a significant increase in metrics with the same number of queries.
The revenue tripled, and the transaction rate increased by 1.5 times.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
Conversion grew because people can find what they came for. For me, the indicator is the cart. When a person finds [a product] on their own and understands that this particular product is what they need.
And trust in the seller, in our site, to make an independent purchase.
We earned our reputation online due to our expertise. If someone contacts us, I want to believe that it's because of this.
Multisearch plays a part in this. If we look at the "before" and "after" of Multisearch, I see an increase.
2 Reasons Why Multisearch
Several factors encouraged IBIS Company to collaborate with us:
1. Comprehensive Search Improvement
The store's team had been working for 9 years to ensure the algorithms worked correctly. However, the search functionality regularly required attention and time. For example, despite the thesaurus and spelling variations, the auto-suggestions in the search bar would fail.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
We had suggestions with Sphinx, but they were unstable there. They didn’t work on mobile devices, or they worked on Android but not on iOS.
Why struggle when we don’t have to, we thought, and chose Multisearch.
The main problem was constant manual development. It takes time, inspiration, and specialists. That's why the comprehensive solution from Multisearch became an aid for technical enhancement and ensuring stable search performance.
2. Support for National Producers
The IBIS team was impressed by the level of service provided by the Ukrainian company Multisearch. The collaboration was influenced by the fact that Multisearch maintains the relevance and quality of the product. Although they have been operating since 2017 and have regular clients in large business niches.
IBIS Company noted:
- Ukrainian development;
- fast support;
- compliance with Google search standards.
Head of the e-commerce department at IBIS
I don’t know when you appeared on the Ukrainian market or whether there were any other Ukrainian software solutions.
The nuance is that you support and develop the product. On the rise, technical support and ambitions.
You felt that people needed this. You understand that there's room for growth, and you are doing it.
The Multisearch team stays in touch daily. The service’s feature is providing quick help to clients: from feed configuration to individual solutions.
Top-3 Tips from the IBIS Team
We asked what businesses should pay attention to before integrating smart search.
Especially if the company had previously focused on offline operations and now wants to digitalize and grow online.
Recommendation 1. Assess the effectiveness of the current search system (if available). When IBIS created a log of searches with no results, it became clear what queries were searched (spelling) and how often. It also highlighted which categories/brands/price segments had the most issues with results.
Recommendation 2. Evaluate the budget and timelines. Implementing a custom solution isn’t always cheaper. And it definitely won’t be faster than a packaged solution from a company of specialized professionals.
Recommendation 3. Evaluate the relevance of your assortment in Google. The competition in the market might be so high that it's worth focusing on general site search optimization. After all, internal search is a constant source of keywords for SEO.
This is the foundation. Clients ready to make a purchase will find exactly what you're offering much faster.
Want to reduce the impact of force majeure on your business? Try search that no one will complain about. Multisearch will save your employees' nerves with a comprehensive packaged solution and take care of your clients with smart algorithms.