{"id":22476,"date":"2024-05-01T07:44:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T15:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bloomreach.com\/library\/bloomreachs-product-search-is-your-route-to-success"},"modified":"2024-07-02T18:51:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T18:51:44","slug":"bloomreachs-product-search-is-your-route-to-success","status":"publish","type":"library","link":"https:\/\/www.bloomreach.com\/en\/blog\/bloomreachs-product-search-is-your-route-to-success","title":{"rendered":"Bloomreach\u2019s Product Search Is Your Route to Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

So you tried to do the impossible and took on a DIY site search project. But as you\u2019ve most likely learned along the way, building a search engine<\/a> for an ecommerce site takes a lot of time, effort, and focus. Not to mention, you\u2019ve likely lost money as you tried to design, build, and perfect it.<\/p>\n

This makes sense, of course, considering it can take years (yes, you read that right, years<\/em>!) to get your ecommerce search<\/a> engine to where you want it to be. Perhaps you weren’t quite aware of this project’s scope when taking it on \u2014 and that\u2019s okay! It\u2019s time to move on to bigger <\/strong>and better <\/strong>things, like an ecommerce search solution built to scale as your company grows.<\/p>\n

Now that you’re back to the drawing board with site search, you might wonder what your next step should be, and in a crowded market with more point solutions than problems, you’re entirely justified in feeling intimidated. Even if your ecommerce team is ready to conquer the next phase of your product discovery journey, be careful not to fall into the trap of only making an incremental change. Sometimes, you need to skip a few rungs in the product search ladder to get to the top, and that\u2019s exactly what you\u2019re doing by investing in an ecommerce product discovery suite like Bloomreach Discovery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Bloomreach<\/p>\n

The Problem With Building Your Own Ecommerce Product Search<\/h2>\n

No matter the market, industry, or desired prospect, no two businesses are cut from the same cloth. This could have been why you were initially hesitant to invest in a smart product search solution. Maybe building your own ecommerce search engine with your merchandiser\u2019s unique, specialized knowledge behind the product<\/a> seemed like a worthy venture and investment. Then, your engineers started to get into the depths of the search project and truly began to understand what a commitment it would be to create ranking algorithms, implement stemming rules, and put together seemingly endless lists of synonyms.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this is what you have to do when it comes to a lot of out-of-the-box solutions, especially if they already come bundled with your ecommerce platform. The appeal of these platforms is pretty understandable \u2014 it\u2019s a flexible and free tool, ready to use and full of promise. This could be the other reason that your brand decided to take on the project of building your site search from scratch, but as you\u2019ve discovered, it\u2019s a lot harder than it seems, and it requires a hefty investment on your part in multiple areas.<\/p>\n

Building a search engine takes time with sophisticated algorithms, vast amounts of organized data, and the cloud-based infrastructure needed for your brand to generate revenue from a product discovery approach. You\u2019ll be responsible for juggling multiple objectives, from achieving semantic understanding<\/a> (identifying the products and attributes in a search query) to grasping the nuances behind customer or buyer behavior.<\/p>\n

\"Bloomreach<\/p>\n

Because of this juggling act, it\u2019s highly likely that you\u2019ll also be exhausting the resources of your engineering, ecommerce, and marketing teams alike. They need to work in tandem to create a robust synonym thesaurus for your search bar, and they\u2019ll also need to optimize the ecommerce search engine to return the right products. Even the most basic searches will turn out to be an obstacle for many brands. Despite the manual tools available to fix these issues yourself, you\u2019ll end up sinking hours into remedying irrelevant search results and low-performing searches. It goes without saying that your team shouldn\u2019t be wasting time and effort on thankless tasks that can be easily automated.<\/p>\n

Why One Step Up the Product Search Ladder Isn\u2019t Enough<\/h2>\n

What if we told you that our competition has attempted to compete in the same class as our artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML, even going so far as to acquire other companies in the process? The only thing is, they\u2019ll never be able to catch up to Bloomreach\u2019s day zero learnings and industry experience. Even as these competitor platforms integrate with one another in an attempt to become as smart as us (a very lengthy and time-consuming process that\u2019s not even guaranteed to work), a huge semantic gap will remain, user intent will continue to fall through the cracks, and money will be left on the table.<\/p>\n

With Bloomreach, you don\u2019t have to wait for our platform to catch up \u2014 because it\u2019s already there. We\u2019ve understood for a long time that the modern-day consumer doesn\u2019t always have the exact language needed to put into the search bar and pull up the right products. Bloomreach makes product discovery feel approachable and even natural for your prospects, which will keep them on your site for longer and ultimately result in a more significant return on investment (ROI) and better time to value (TTV) for your ecommerce team.<\/p>\n

\"Bloomreach<\/p>\n

Previously, we mentioned day zero learnings and industry experience. So, if you haven\u2019t read our all- new guide<\/a> (yet), here\u2019s exactly what we mean and how we know that we differ from our competitors:<\/p>\n