How to make site searchers convert better: Lessons learned from Orka

Jun 7, 2024

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3 min read

Orka at https://orka.ca/ is a Canadian online retailer specializing in tools and electrical parts from top-notch manufacturers and brands. After installing the Product Filter and Search app in March 2021, the store has witnessed significant changes in sales thanks to optimizing site search and product filtering. The app is making up approximately 9% of Orka’s revenue from March to September. Also, site searchers, which account for 7% of the overall traffic, convert 6x better than visitors without searches.

We have connected with Morgan Moreira - eCommerce Marketing Manager of Rexel Canada, the company behind Orka, and got many interesting insights from him. It's a great honor for Boost Commerce to feature Orka in a case study and share with our audience some practical tips regarding site search and filter optimization.

About the online store of Orka

Orka was a part of the growth strategy of Rexel Canada that has 2 main objectives:

to expand its customer reach (such as the DIY emerging market for B2C)
to better serve its existing audiences (B2B)

The goal of Orka, Morgan said, is to “create a best-in-class 100% digital shopping experience”.

To achieve this, Morgan and his team focus on “having a well-built user-experience with user-friendly navigation, site search, easy & fast checkout process. Another key aspect is having detailed and high-quality content on product detail pages (PDPs) to showcase unique selling propositions, product benefits, and how the product(s) answers the users’ needs or problems. And last I would say that transparency is key, so having easy and simple shipping + return policies, as well as easy access to a live chat, an email, or a phone number for customer service support is mandatory.”

👉 3 things an online store needs to invest in to generate sales:

Optimized UX in navigation, site search, and checkout
High-quality content on the product detail page
Transparency in shipping and return policies

Why Orka needs Boost Product Filter & Search app

In fact, all Shopify stores should install a third-party app to handle site search and product filtering. The theme native search feature usually falls short to satisfy the need of both online shoppers and e-merchants in terms of bringing up relevant results quickly. That's why Orka needed a more robust solution like our app.

“We have thousands of SKUs on our site and we’re constantly adding new products. No need to say we needed a robust search feature to allow users to find products they were looking for while promoting other related products. We also needed a powerful collection filter feature to narrow users' searches and make it easier for them to find the product they’re looking for.” Morgan shared

However, Morgan and the Orka team didn't pick Product Filter & Search by Boost Commerce in the first place.

“We did a lot of research on this. We read tons of reviews from actual app users, we surveyed some FB groups for Shopify merchants in order to get their thoughts, we read tons of comments about one vs another, and we also tested quite a few.” - Morgan remembered.

After trying a few other ones, some even way cheaper than the Boost app, Orka team still decided to settle with Boost Product Filter & Search as “we found Product Filter & Search to be the most powerful and flexible of all. Customization was important for us as we have a very large product catalog, so we needed our Search & Filter app to allow for customization when it comes to having dedicated filter trees for specific collections, access to search analytics to add synonyms or suggestions for users to find the products they’re looking for, etc.”

Morgan added: “At the end of the day Product Filter & Search by Boost Commerce was the best fit for us... The design customization is very flexible, the customer support was really helpful when we needed a hand to set it up and customize it, and the analytics are very powerful (used terms, synonyms, filter trees, suggestions, etc.)”

How Orka enjoys using Product Filter & Search by Boost Commerce

When asked about the favorite feature of the Boost app, Morgan said it's the filter trees without hesitation.

“We have thousands of products and we’re always adding new ones. So we needed to be able to segment the filter trees so they would make sense for each specific product category (i.e: our Power Distribution category has some Load Centers and we wanted to have filters for Breaker Ampage, Panel Ampage, Voltage, etc. But a collection about light bulbs would need completely different filters since these don’t apply to Lighting). This app allows us to do just that 🙂” - he explained.

Power Distribution collection (left-hand image) has a different filter tree from Lightning collection (right-hand image).

Morgan is also satisfied with our customer service, which is helpful in checking and doing some design inquiries to match the brand identity of Orka. We'll keep investing in this and reduce the response time so the Orka team and other merchants can enjoy the best support.

Positive results thanks to the use of Boost Product Filter & Search

After a few months of using our app, Orka has seen some improvements in filter and site search usage. Conversion from site searchers is also contributing greatly to the overall revenue.

(This number is calculated during the period from March to September)

We are more than happy to see our customers leverage growth with advanced technologies in filter and search. Thanks Morgan for joining us in this case study. Hope that this will help online merchants out there choose a perfect solution to upgrade the UX of their store. BFCM is around the corner and it's not too late to try an app that can prove to generate sales for your store.

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Ellie Ho

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Content Marketing Specialist

September 11, 2024

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6 min read

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How to make site searchers convert better: Lessons learned from Orka

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