Carrera

In order to achieve a better conversation rate for the web shop carrera-toys.com, the manufacturer of car racing tracks, Carrera, did not only commission an extensive re-platforming, but also the optimisation of the shop’s search function. Carrera chose Findologic as the search engine and commercetools as the e-commerce system. The improved search performance is remarkable – and so is the conversion rate.

The Carrera web shop, carrera-toys.com, runs on the JavaScript library React which is used in the front end, and on Kentico EMS as the content management system in the back end – otherwise known as Kentico Xperience. The API-first approach of the elect e-commerce platform, commercetools, covers the entire range of shop functionalities. byte5 hosts the shop on Microsoft Azure for Carrera. The search engine provider Findologic was used to optimise the quality of the search results and that of the suggestion function.

E-commerce is becoming increasingly complex – long gone are the days when a classic shop system was sufficient for extensive web solutions. To offer all the necessary functionalities, modern web shops require the sophisticated arrangement of excellent components. In Carrera’s case, these are commercetools and Findologic on the one hand and React and Kentico EMS on the other.

In order to fully make use of the advantages that content commerce offers and to increase the conversion rate, Carrera wanted a search functionality that would include both continuous text and product data and deliver them to the user in an orderly fashion. For the implementation, Carrera relied on Findologic as the search engine and on byte5 as the expert for the integration work. The byte5 team was faced with the challenge of implementing a search function that takes information from two very different data sources and combines it in one output: the Findologic feed. In addition, byte5 took on optimising the website’s performance.

Contrary to the widespread practice of installing search engines improperly as add-ons, byte5 invested seven man days to implement the thorough integration of the complex search solution. The effort has paid off: carrera-toys.com is one of the first web shops to use Findologic’s own JSON API and thus the full potential of the search engine. The Carrera project was also one of the first that implemented Findologic natively in React, without any plug-in. The JSON interface enables the clean transfer of platform- and programming language-independent data between microservices and other program parts. The data delivered by the search engine consists of product information – which is stored in commercetools – and also content elements that are managed with the use of Kentico EMS. The JSON API ensures the website’s high performance.

But speed is not the only plus point which the new Findologic-based web shop search function offers: The fuzzy search “Smart-Did-You-Mean” provides broader search results. Variants and related products are also shown. Preview images make the shopping experience more vivid. With an add-to-cart button in the flap-out menu, the byte5 team further customised the search function.

In terms of content commerce, Findologic indexes structured data that make additional information such as landing pages and product worlds easy to find. The Findologic feed provides high quality, intelligent product recommendations from two different data sources, which are presented to the user as a single unit. The search results are provided in a clear, bundled and quick manner. The intuitive UX is made possible by the smart connection of Findologic with the customised development of the React component front end.

The add-to-cart button in the flap-out menu helps the customer search for and find a product that can then be placed in the shopping cart with just one click. Thanks to the Findologic search functions “Live Search” and “Assisted Suggest”, the Carrera shop benefits from a shortened customer journey. The result of all measures carried out by byte5: an immensely increased conversion rate on carrera-toys.com.