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E-commerce

Startups

Check out a list of the best mobile commerce apps, learn how they deliver value, and get some inspiration for your future projects >>

Top 10 Best Mobile Commerce Apps: Best Cases

Check out a list of the best mobile commerce apps, learn how they deliver value, and get some inspiration for your future projects.

Top-10 Mobile Commerce Apps. Best cases

marketplace_MVP_preview.svg

Over the past 15 years, our company has been collaborating with startups across the globe on launching and scaling their marketplace businesses. Working across industries, we now clearly see how the concept of a marketplace startup has evolved recently. A marketplace platform is no longer a place for selling physical goods exclusively. Custom marketplace-like businesses are now aiming at solving complex problems, allowing vendors to bring their creativity, digital products, and a variety of services to broader audiences.  

This blog is a summary of our thoughts regarding the [MVP development](https://wise-engineering.com/expertise/mvp-development/) of the marketplace app. From our experience, the MVP step helps to quickly validate the ideas and make necessary product pivots before the actual product development starts. Here’s how you can organize this step for your project more effectively.

## No one needs another marketplace

However sad it sounds, with the shift towards branded marketplaces, only companies with the mission and specific problems they are addressing can count for users’ attention and favor. 

How does this relate to the MVP development phase? The answer is simple. If you’re launching a regular marketplace the same as myriads others out there, what’s the point of developing its MVP? What is there to validate with a minimum viable product? You can select one of the ready-made E-commerce solutions and start a business.

But if you have a specific idea in mind of how you can connect different people and solve challenges they are facing, you need to see if this idea receives traction. For this, analytics data and client feedback would be valuable and help you understand how you should change the initial concept to make it more useful and, hence, profitable. 

The success of marketplace business in the post-covid reality requires more than an easy-to-access shopping destination. A successful marketplace today is no longer a place having *everything for everyone* but rather a platform connecting specific vendors, addressing specific problems aimed at specific audiences. Learn more about the [evolution of marketplace app development](https://wise-engineering.com/blog/post/5-shifts-defining-marketplace-development-in-2022/) from our previous blog post.  

![Marketplace platform development](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/marketplace_mvp_role_badc092520.svg)

To better define the needs of this specific audience and provide better solutions to the problems they are facing, you need a marketplace MVP. 

Consider launching an MVP if you need to:
- Bring your idea to the market quickly to see if it gets traction
- Learn from the audience feedback and introduce customizations
- Build a product within the fixed budget and timeframes
- Showcase platform concept to stakeholders

Check out our recent post on [MVP mindset](https://wise-engineering.com/blog/post/how-to-develop-a-true-mvp-mindset/) to be more prepared for the planning step.

## Feature set for the marketplace MVP

A minimum viable product, or in the case of marketplace development, a minimum viable platform is a custom solution that solves the core problem of the target audience and meets the key expectations of all the sides of the marketplace – vendors, customers, and business owners. 

The success of any product, and marketplace platform is no exception, is the unique value proposition it offers. With the marketplace model, this value proposition should be formulated for both sellers and buyers. And only after the value proposition is defined the core features set for an MVP can be assembled. For each business, the value propositions, and thus, the unique features set for an MVP will differ, but if to look at this aspect from a very high-level perspective, there are some common patterns.
- **Value propositions for vendors** should contain the ability to market the products or services they produce. Each vendor needs the ability to customize their profile to bring their unique proposal to the platform’s visitors.
- **Value proposition for customers** should include an efficient search experience on the platform that delivers specific product or service variants for a peculiar user. Ability to compare vendors, select the best matching variant and make a purchase quickly. 

As** for business owners (or administrators)**, the key functions will include the moderation of all the counterparts, as well as efficient analytics on how both vendors and customers interact with the platform, at what steps of the UX there are problems, and what workflows work best. 

To sum up, the feature set for the marketplace MVP should allow all the counterparts to fulfill their ultimate goals on the marketplace platform, and depending on the product type, industry, or any other specifics these features will vary. The important thing to understand is that the better you formulate your value proposition for the specific audience, the easier you define the workflows you want to test and definite the features to implement during the MVP development step.

![Feature set for marketplace MVP](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/marketplace_mvp_feature_set_bc41872e75.svg)

## Functionality requiring special engineering expertise

Depending on the main idea behind a custom marketplace, the functionality that would require the most engineering efforts will vary. From our experience, the aspects listed further can become one of them.

### Online payments

Along with the defined problem your business addresses and value proposition for the target audience, at the MVP development for startups it is vital to decide on the business monetization strategy that can be realized via:

- Commission fee
- Subscription plans
- Paid listing
- Advertisement

Besides, to enable purchasing on the marketplace, the platform should be connected to at least one payment gateway. Taxing & invoicing, split and recurring payments, payouts, inventory management, online payment security, and compliance are other aspects to consider in advance and require expertise from the tech team in charge of the MVP development.

### On-site search
E-commerce search is important when your business relates to the user-generated content, digital products, service line, or product catalog that is hard to categorize.

This functionality is beneficial for both end customers and vendors. For the first, the more relevant the search results delivered, the better user experience is provided. <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14953/what-do-76-of-consumers-want-from-your-website-new-data.aspx" target="_blank">76% of website visitors</a> think that the key UX factor on a website is how easily they can find the necessary information. For vendors, the relevant work of the on-site search engine ensures fair competition on the marketplace platform. 

Of course, all the advanced search customizations of the internal search are out of the question at the MVP development step, but some features require minimum engineering efforts but greatly enhance the customer experience even at the initial steps. They include:

- Autocomplete for the search queries. 
- Sound-like and synonym search. 
- Fuzzy search (ignoring typos, plural and case forms, and more).
- Faceted search and filters. 

Learn how the [E-commerce search](https://wise-engineering.com/blog/post/e-commerce-search-budgeting--where-to-invest-first-/) can be developed across development iterations.

### Product-specific requirements
A lot of functionality that is developed at the MVP steps depends on the unique business idea. The more complex the products presented on the platform, the better you need to plan the platform's architecture for further scaling.

If you are creating a marketplace for some digital content, videos or podcasts, for example, separate attention should be paid to creating a video upload and playback library and the platform’s infrastructure. If you know that there are some marketing campaigns planned, your tech team should prepare the system for the expected number of visitors and higher system load. With any other business context or requirements list, the tech aspects that would require more attention will vary. 

Learn more about how to approach [tech stack planning for the MVP development](https://wise-engineering.com/blog/post/tech-choices-in-startup-mvp-development/) step.

## Roadmap for marketplace platform MVP development

To bring the expected results, the MVP development step should be thoroughly planned. This phase should contain only the development of functionality that allows users to test the platform from start to the desired state but not with multiple options on their way. This approach is called Minimum marketable user flow and, from our experience, helps to avoid over-engineering and speeds up the launch significantly.

The infographic below summarizes how the marketplace MVP step is usually organized when our team is involved in the engineering process.

![Roadmap for marketplace MVP](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/marketplace_mvp_workflow_24293304f9.svg)

## Marketplace businesses we helped to launch
Here are some inspiring startups that are based on the multi-vendor marketplace concept – bringing creators closer to their specific audiences. Our team is very proud to be part of their success stories as the mission behind each of them is impactful and inspiring.

### Online auction and events marketplace

One of our clients decided to challenge the regular entertainment opportunities like visiting a concert or sports event and decided to launch a marketplace of exclusive experiences and an online auction. Together with the Wise team, they developed and successfully launched an MVP for a marketplace and now are a fully operational and successful business that managed to survive even the covid pandemic that was devastating for the whole entertainment industry.

Read full [case study on marketplace MVP development](https://wise-engineering.com/case-studies/granted/).

### All-in-one platform for fitness chain

Another Wise client addressed the challenges the covid pandemics brought to the sports and fitness industry. As people were not able to train offline, the platform creators decided to help fitness trainers adopt new approaches to collaboration with their students. 

The platform was designed to allow trainers to monetize their efforts in creating virtual workouts and online personal training programs. With the tech assistance of the Wise team, our client received the MVP of the digital fitness platform in 3 months and launched the platform’s 1.0 version with significant improvements and extensions in another quarter. The collaboration with the fitness trainers as a focus group throughout the development process contributed greatly to the project's success.

Read full [case study on MVP app development](https://wise-engineering.com/case-studies/core/).

## What is your idea?
Outsourced marketplace app development services open great opportunities for startuppers today. With a clear vision of what you need to validate at the MVP step and the right tech partner at your side, you can test your idea with reasonable investments and within a strict time frame. 

Contact us to discuss the business context for your marketplace business. We’ll help define the core platform functionality and all the tech aspects to consider at the initial steps, including tech stack assembling, team augmentation, and more. 







This blog is a summary of insights on marketplace MVP development we received launching marketplace businesses for our clients during the last 15 years.

MVP development for a marketplace platform

Consider the specifics of the marketplace business when launching its MVP. Our team shares insights based on our experience. 

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Search

E-commerce search is an extensive domain, and the computing efforts to on-site search tuning can be rather intensive. But do all the search functions require the same amount of resources to implement? Where should you start when improving the search experience on your website, and what will bring you the most value at different steps? 

At Wise Engineering, we've been working with E-commerce site search implementation and tuning for 15 years, and here's a general roadmap we recommend to our customers. It will help you approach search budgeting more strategically, see where you're now, and where you're going in the long run.

## How to approach search budgeting strategically

As E-commerce companies begin to realize the benefits of improved search experience to their customers, it is now always clear how to start the optimization process and how much resources will be needed for the configuration of each particular feature or selected optimization. 

We’ve divided the whole process of enterprise search tuning into levels depending on the engineering efforts they require. Though we do not provide the exact numbers, you can clearly see what will cost you the most. The higher on the pyramid you go, the more advanced the task is, and the more budget you will need to allocate.

For us, the pyramid also illustrates the logic roadmap of the improved E-commerce search. You can easily start with the first levels, measure the results and move up the pyramid towards the advanced search experience for your E-commerce platform.

This roadmap is applicable to all existing search engine solutions you might currently use – <a href="https://www.elastic.co/" target="_blank">Elastic search</a>, <a href="https://www.algolia.com/" target="_blank">Algolia</a>, <a href="https://solr.apache.org/" target="_blank">Solr</a>, and others. Some features require a few configurations of the search engine and they are on the initial layers of our pyramid. Some search capabilities will be engineered specifically for your business and are located on the top. 

![E-commerce search budgeting](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/Investing_steps_for_internal_site_search_799e3253a6.svg)

Let's analyze each of the levels in detail.

## Level 1 – Basic search

The first level usually starts with UX improvements and functionality available out-of-the-box by most search engines and requires a few simple configurations that don’t take much developer’s time. Before starting any significant and time-consuming configurations, try enabling the autocomplete feature, compose separate thesaurus specific to your E-commerce segment, configure a fuzzy search and stopwords filtering. Measure the performance and decide on further investments.

- **UX improvements**. They can, for example, include: creating a visible search box, changing the search box location, highlighting search results, using microcopy for a search bar, showing the number of results, keeping recent user’s queries, and more. 
- **Autocomplete**. Do not consider this a simple feature that reduces typing efforts for customers. Despite the simplicity in the configuration, autocomplete allows your customers to express their search intent aligned with the query understanding of your online store. This helps you increase the search quality with minimum investments.
- **Synonyms**. For every industry you’re selling products or services to, there is a specific synonym range your on-site search should be able to interpret. You can compose a thesaurus specific to your business and add it to the search engine configurations.
- **Fuzzy search**. This configuration helps to ignore typos, plural forms, case forms and minimize the failed search results.
- **Stopwords filtering.** Stopwords are the common words that do not bring any valuable context in most search cases and only expand the search results. At first, the stopwords list can include articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs. Then it can be filled with the words you would define as non-important as you analyze the queries further.

## Level 2 – Search refinement

When the basic search configurations are made, you can proceed with improving how users browse the search results and refine their searches. People hate any extra work, and your customers are no exception. It is always more pleasurable to click on refinement options than browse through multiple paginated search results.

- **Faceted search** helps users refine the search results once they have a listing in response to their query. This could be done based on numerous additional parameters like size, color, brand, price, and more. With facets configured, search results change between the searches depending on the selected parameters.
- **Filters** do not work this flexibly and help only to eliminate the search results based on initial criteria. For example, users can select either browsing shoes for adults or children, but they can not select both and add more parameters to get the search results changed. 
- **Filter suggestion** feature enabled allows users to search directly within a selected category. This also helps searchers avoid information overload and find what they are looking for faster.
- **Sorting** helps to order search records based on specific attributes like price (from lowest to highest or vice versa), popularity, and other parameters.

If it is relevant to your business, at this step you can also configure a **location-based search** and provide results relevant to your customers from different locations.

## Level 3 – Search ranking

We approached the level that would require some more implementation time, and, thus, resources. We included fine-tuning **textual relevance**, **user-based** and **attribute-based ranking** in this step. All of them are related to the search ranking and aim to show at the top those results that address your business goals.

At this point, the search engineering team should closely collaborate with the product or business development teams. The sample questions they would define at this step are the following:

1. What results should be shown at the top?
2. Does merchants' rating influence the relevance?
3. What role does the price play? Do we show the least expensive goods first?
4. What fields are included in the searching process and what should be added or removed?
5. What fields in a product are the most important?
6. How to evaluate the relevance of each product for different customer personas?

Working with your development team at this level, you can set up rules that drive search relevance based on specific parameters.

- **Attribute-based ranking** helps to match shopper queries with not only product names, but also brand names, product types, descriptions, categories, colors, or several of these at the same time.
- **User-based ranking** will take into account demographics, location, user preferences. All the criteria known about the particular user.  
- **Textual relevance** tuning is especially important for the cases when the complexity of catalogs is combined with user-generated product listings. 

## Level 4 – Relevance tuning

Custom ranking surely matters in search optimization and helps address some business objectives, but it is a search relevance model in its broader sense that we want to achieve. 

We recommend starting this step with an **analysis of zero-result queries** that are usually the best source of insights. Why does your system fail to provide what users are searching for in particular cases? At this point, we help our clients compare successful and failed sessions, look more precisely at searches that return zero results, and find commonalities between them. Ideally, we would divide zero-searches into classes and find solutions to turn them into successful ones.

During the previous step, we defined the ranking rules that can be now neglected for some specific use cases. By defining **query-dependent ranking factors**, you can achieve dynamic ranking. For example, you have the rule to show more expensive products on top of the search results, but if a person types the word free in the search bar this rule should be neglected. At this step, with the right tech team, you can fine-tune your search engine to provide the most relevant search results specific to your business use cases.

Furthermore, to make the search system understand which results are relevant for broad or ambiguous queries, you would need to configure **query expansion**. This is a technique when the original user’s query is expanded by adding additional words that help to narrow the query semantics. Query expansion helps determine the searcher’s intent and route users towards a more refined search query.

## Level 5 – Advanced search

We have to admit, this level is the most complex and resource-consuming, yet once you reach it, there are, really, no limits. At this step, you will have the capabilities to rethink how your search performs on the highest level and optimize the enterprise search engine with the most advanced technology and methods. Instead of focusing on the efficient ranking algorithm, you will have the ability to create an efficient query understanding mechanism, an advanced system that will learn along the way and focus on query performance as a key success metric. 

- **Query refinement analysis** helps to look at the process of refining (narrowing down) the initial user searching item and analyze user behavior after the results were provided. This data will help to provide narrowed down paths to results that your users await.
- **Query understanding** is the process of establishing the searcher's intent before providing any results. Your search engine will be able to automatically determine when a search query is broad or ambiguous and expand it to provide relevant results.
- **AI-based search personalization** allows you to serve users personalized search results based on their previous searches, activities, and purchases. The tech team will need to track and collect users' signals, interpret them, and build relevant user profiles. The search results will be modified based on these profiles but the system won't neglect the textual relevance you've built during the previous steps. 

## Configurations running in parallel

As you move along the steps of E-commerce site search optimization, two aspects should be considered no matter where you are in this roadmap. They are internal search monitoring and performance tuning. You can also learn more [E-commerce site search best practices](https://wise-engineering.com/blog/post/6-e-commerce-site-search-best-practices-for-2022/) from our recent blog post.

### Analytics for internal search

Some queries lead to great performance. Some queries deliver zero results. Without measuring this data, you can not move to optimization at any step. Search analytics provides you with important information on what your customers want, how they describe the products or services they are looking for, and gives you hints on how you can optimize your offers and overall search experience.

For example, you can track:

- Queries users enter
- Most popular results
- Most-bought products after search 
- Most-used filters
- Average position of search result click
- How deep do users go in pagination (do they find good results on the first page?)

Though analytics is a topic that never gets underestimated and is often included in the project scope, setting it up properly is a daunting task for the tech team. Engineers will need to build a data tracking pipeline, normalize queries (taking into account synonyms, typos, word forms), make the analytics privacy compliant, and visualize the results for stakeholders. Analytics also opens a possibility to run A/B tests and evaluate introduced optimizations during and after each level we’ve described above.

### Performance tuning

Because search experience is often the primary path to purchase, making the search for enterprise perform faster even for milliseconds can lead to increased revenue. From day one as you introduced search to your E-commerce store, monitor search for downtimes, speed, and vulnerabilities for the sensitive data you might collect.

When our team deals with on-site performance tuning, we start with tech resources analysis that includes analysis of the computing, memory storage, and network you use to run the search on your platform. After this analysis, we proceed with cluster configuration optimization and index configuration to help the search engine perform faster. All the additional optimizations depend on the business goals set for the internal search.

## Reach us for E-commerce search consulting 

Enterprise search is not something you set and forget. There is always room for investment, and now you have a clear vision of where you might start. You can hire the Wise Engineering team if you're looking for site search experts that can ensure quality, best performance, and scalability for your on-site search.

Learn more about our [Elastic site search expertise](https://wise-engineering.com/expertise/elasticsearch-integration/) and contact us to book a consultation to discuss your specific business context.
 

Approach E-commerce search budgeting more strategically. Check out a roadmap for E-commerce site search optimization and get more search conversions. See blog>>

E-commerce search budgeting: Where to invest first?

Check out a roadmap for E-commerce site search optimization and approach search budgeting more strategically.

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The core strategy of any multi-vendor marketplace is to become an online destination. The E-commerce boom started long before Covid-19 pandemics continues to fuel the competition today. To remain noticeable within their industry segments, companies need to understand what shifts took place recently and quickly adopt changes applicable to their businesses. 

We’ve come up with a list of 5 major approach transformations in marketplace development that should help you shape your E-commerce business strategy for the upcoming year.

## Needs-based vs brand marketplaces

The first and most powerful shift took place in the way customers and marketplace owners see the aim of commerce. Needs-based markets fail to satisfy the present demand. The main principles of convenience, ease, and relevance are no longer about having *everything for everyone in one place*. A positive buyer experience requires more than just a shopping destination. Thus, even mega or niche marketplaces can’t fulfill the consumer’s needs for the buyer (not the product) to be the center of merchants’ attention.

### Brand marketplaces surge

To stand out a marketplace should be more than just a transactional site. And that’s why brand marketplaces are on the rise. Now it’s all about *something for someone anywhere they need it*. And to inject life into commercial operations, marketplaces aim to build strong relationships and gain customer loyalty. That includes **personalization, growing communities, and providing customized service with online shopping**. Thus, the latter turns into a meaningful and united virtual experience. Particular products are targeted to particular customers and create a one-stop-shop.

Another reason for this tendency is that brands try to get rid of the risks of retailers and dealers ruining their brand equity. Thus, any customer at any point has one and only destination for a certain brand. And the popular option is to browse products online, find a physical store location, and *click and collect*, either offline or have it shipped anywhere. Seamlessly integrated buyer experience matters most. 

### What makes a brand marketplace

Brand marketplaces create not just buyer experiences, but membership experiences, and aim to turn into membership economies in the long run. Unbranded search in everything-for-everyone mega marketplaces is replaced with the brand building to provide greater value to the audience. 

To remain relevant in these volatile times, brand marketplaces need to:

- Invest in smart or unexpected collaborations to explore new customer territory and stretch the margins of brand identities. As opposed to outdated brand protectionism.
- Provide overlap between digital and physical brand presence to support multiple touchpoints and hybrid structures.
- Ensure technical maturity across markets to streamline the customer journey.

![Marketplace requirements shift](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/marketplace_development_brand_marketplace_requirements_3030a09528.svg)

## Enterprise vs small businesses & localization

Another natural alteration relates to geographical location and its influence on commercial success. In the past, it was all about large enterprises merging (read – swallowing) smaller companies to dominate with the same products and services global-wide. In the post-Covid period when local communities get lots of support, localization is a win-win strategy. Especially for cross-border E-commerce.
 
Successful multi-vendor marketplace development in 2022 requires a powerful localized approach. The latter helps international brands gain more revenue in different geographical areas. What matters is speaking to the shoppers in their language in product descriptions and/or customer support. 

### Localization is not equal to text translation
 
The first distinctive localization feature is attention to cultural distinctions and preferences. To engage your local audiences, make the marketplace relevant to them. And it’s not just about translating the pages of websites or apps into other languages. Localization goes far beyond that. It includes offering payment options popular within the region, presenting prices in native currency, and adjusting imagery to the specific cultural, social, or religious features. <a href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-cee/consumer-insights/consumer-trends/cross-bording-shopping-strategies/" target="_blank">73% of consumers</a> are still unwilling to trade a localized website for a price 30% lower, as the International Online Shopping Survey shows.
 
Multi-vendor marketplaces can also benefit from local service bundling. Large platforms may offer local services to make them exclusive and preferable in certain areas.

### Large marketplaces empowering local businesses

One more localization approach is to apply the supply chain consolidation local-wise. You can either use only local suppliers and deny international ones or focus on particular domestic regions.

At the same time, large marketplaces have the power to help local businesses either to emerge or evolve. But this doesn’t mean swallowing or blending them. Effective marketplace development in terms of localization means creating bigger ecosystems where small businesses have their part to play. 

Collaborations of companies of different sizes unlock more value for all stakeholders. They boost the local economies via generating additional jobs directly or as side-effects. Large companies also benefit from better matches for different regions. They can get more from the same amount of effort. Yet, to apply this strategy successfully, you should consider the social environment and competition in the local market.

## Single-channel vs omnichannel strategy

The single-channel strategy may still work for companies with limited budgets or scopes. Yet, technology made it possible for consumers to shop across channels with no or little difference in buyer experience. Thus, marketplaces have to do their best to develop their presence in all possible channels. And that incorporates interactions between a brand, a customer, and a retailer.

The prevalence of the omnichannel strategy among multi-vendor marketplaces proves once again that it’s no longer about the product. The focus is shifted to the customers themselves. Brands create a faultless customer experience and leverage the customer data across all channels. 

After all, it’s worth the effort. Businesses with the omnichannel customer engagement strategy retain about <a href="https://cybra.com/10-omnichannel-retail-statistics-you-cant-avoid/" target="_blank">89% of their customers</a> compared to 33% for those with weak omnichannel customer engagement, as the Cybra research proves.

![Comparing single-channel and omnichannel strategies](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/marketplace_development_single_channel_vs_omnichannel_c7250c2249.svg)

### Omnichannel strategy advantages

The benefits of the omnichannel strategy are rather explicit.

- **Better customer experience.** Consumers interact with the marketplace in preferable ways. Synchronized customer information helps provide a personalized customer experience with little or no chance for incorrect data or shipments.
- **Increase in sales and traffic.** Expanded and more agile sale strategies and value-added content drive revenue.
- **Boosted customer loyalty.** Increased customer satisfaction and high-quality content across all channels help retain customers.
- **Better data collection.** The marketplace gets valuable insights on how to generate content and what offers will work better both online and offline.

### Possible challenges

The benefits of this strategy also might generate some challenges, as they call for a lot of attention to detail and consolidated processes. A seamless shopping experience requires perfect knowledge of your audience to create the right strategies in the right channels. Thus, another issue is the selection of channels that matter to your audience and working on a solid strategy for each of them. 

Yet, the most fundamental factor is the cost and accuracy of the strategy for developing all channels in an integrated and interconnected manner. Consistency requires a lot of resources like time, knowledge, and maintenance. And that results in building teams, skills, content, and tools to manage these processes.

### Why switch from B2C to D2C

To ensure a compatible omnichannel policy, B2C marketplaces can’t afford not to have a powerful D2C strategy. This robust approach allows businesses to prevent their overreliance on brick-and-mortar or third-party retailers. Using D2C channels helped blend offline and online presence in a new *clicks and mortar* business model.

The retail disruption during the pandemic proved that proper D2C strategies also help maintain business continuity and satisfy the evolving demand for uninterrupted *no-middlemen* customer experience. The latter gives direct access to valuable customer feedback that can be used to drive sales. Total control over all aspects of customer experience helps build emotional relations and nurture customer loyalty. 

To build decent customer-facing D2C experiences, marketplaces need to optimize their back-office processes. In such straightforward re-designing of the commerce models, you need to focus on business core competencies. Yet, this challenge can be seen as a benefit for your improving business strategy as a whole. To succeed, learn to concentrate on doing what you're best at and what matters most.  Weigh your options and delegate other aspects that can take too much opportunity cost like [custom E-commerce development](https://wise-engineering.com/expertise/e-commerce/). 

## Local vs cross-border trade
The immense shift in consumer habits allowed E-commerce to go cross-border with virtually no geographical limitations. This surge doesn’t only apply to certain types of products or services. Consumers make cross-border purchases of everything – from everyday items to luxury. 

And this is not a short-term issue, rather an evolving tendency. Those who converted to online shopping during the pandemic are likely to stay after things go back to normal (well, the new normal). And the predictions are that the bigger part of it will be cross-border.

In a nutshell, despite all the benefits of this marketplace globalization, cross-border E-commerce has no one-size-fits solution. Different marketplaces have multiple options for different markets and regions. Such diversity ensures proper pricing, customer satisfaction, and retention. To stay relevant and profitable, cross-border E-commerce has to tackle several challenges.

### Cross-border banking

Multi-vendor marketplace consumers expect payment options that use local payment networks, their own banks, and new mobile methods. Yet, when a shopper makes a cross-border purchase, the transaction involves not just their bank but the merchant’s bank. It also includes a payment processor, card network, issuing bank, an acquiring bank. Whether the customers select the preferred payment type themselves or follow the merchants’ options, the FX margin may be quite different and, thus, increase the total purchase price. And that’s what your customers need to know in advance.

### Cross-border taxation

Brands selling cross-border need to follow local tax laws, import and export regulations. The outbreak of Covid-19 increased the number of countries that tax foreign exchange payments as well as the tax amount itself.

Failure to understand the nuances in local regulations could result in serious financial penalties and damage to brand reputation. If the consumers bear these additional costs (and they usually do), it’s not the bank, but the merchant who is responsible for all the clarification. Transparency is the only strategy to avoid misunderstanding as to why and what taxes they are charged.

### Price variation across countries

Marketplaces that involve cross-border E-commerce cannot and should not have the same price in different markets and regions. Pricing policy should be elastic locally and internationally. And elasticity is not only about the price but the value as well, both tangible and intangible. 

Price alteration comes in two options.

1. **Cosmetic changes** happen when the merchant only converts the price applying local currency. Earlier, we addressed the importance of localization for gaining trust. Shoppers expect to make a transaction in their local currency (by default or choosing it among other options) regardless of the product’s country of origin. Conversion can still be carried out in different ways. Sometimes it allows the merchant to grasp additional fees and not to let the card issuer benefit from it. 
2. **True price localization** is when the price differs across different markets, countries, and regions. In this case, price (and availability) for goods or services may vary globally or even across one country either due to governmental policies, currency exchange rates, taxes, tariffs, and insurance factors or market individuality like consumption composition, facilities, providers, competitors, brand preferences and local market needs.

In any case, the three major points are: to be transparent with the buyers, to stay within the internal pricing corridor for price differentiation, and to handle the price localization yourself.
 
Thus, to make the price relevant to actual market value, it is possible to use automated monitoring tools. They help keep track of products in different distribution channels, resellers and competitors, inside different countries and markets. Automated monitoring tools save the merchants time and money. And the data you receive prompts how to improve your branding strategy.

### Security issues

Multi-vendor marketplace development also requires reliable and seamless systems to support cross-border payments. Firstly, it’s vital to keep constant track of data protection regulations. These are specific to countries involved in E-commerce and tend to change the terms and compliance dates. Their violation may result in budget and brand reputation loss. 
 
The cross-border trade boom also means a greater number of online crimes. To make cross-border transactions safer and prevent cybercrime, leading payment providers started to introduce or, at least, consider utilizing biometrics and KYC identity verifications. To protect revenue streams and ensure customer security, online marketplaces may also need to involve these technologies. As well as international payment messaging standards like ISO 20022. At present, <a href="https://managedlei.com/blog/the-challenges-of-cross-border-payments/" target="_blank">70 countries</a> across the globe have adopted the latter, and more should join to provide interoperability and online purchasing security.

## Build vs buy in marketplace development

When it comes to marketplace creation, [custom E-commerce development](https://wise-engineering.com/expertise/e-commerce/) is always the choice. Yet it does not mean that all the functionality will be written from scratch. To launch faster, experienced tech teams opt for ready-made API-level solutions or parts of those to solve some trivial tasks and focus on those parts of the E-commerce platform that brings the most value to the end-users. 

It makes sense if marketplace development is seen not just as a platform creation but as shaping the engine that moves the E-commerce business forward. This option allows instead of reinventing the wheel and diving into troublesome and long-term development, to focus on what makes your business special and constitutes its core competencies. 

For example, if you run a cross-border marketplace, you would obviously need a custom solution for banking, payments, and taxes. At the same time, you can integrate a SaaS product for website analytics or email marketing. If your marketplace possesses a variety of products that are hard to categorize and the integration of the full-text [internal search](https://wise-engineering.com/expertise/elasticsearch-integration/) is the only way to help users find the necessary goods, this aspect would require the most effort of your development team.

![How to make a build vs buy decision](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/marketplace_development_build_vs_buy_f08f74e319.svg)

## Key takeaways

Recent transformations in the global E-commerce industry create multiple opportunities for marketplace development. Here are the main handy takeaways you can start implementing. 

- In marketplace development, consider buying existing components, many of which have become commodities nowadays, and invest in building what makes your business core value.
- Focus on the brand of your marketplace. The strategy of selling everything to everyone is in the past. It’s all about personalization and customization now.
- Collaborate with small regional businesses to evolve together and create mutual benefits. Apply thorough localization strategies. The commercial success of your marketplace across the globe directly depends on how well you can relate to diverse local communities. 
- When exploring new horizons through cross-border trade, do not underestimate the risks related to banking, taxation, pricing, and security.
- Embrace your customer's attention through multiple channels. Make your brand omnipresent and integrated into offline and online shopping.



Get the list of 5 major approach transformations in marketplace development that should help you shape your E-commerce business strategy for 2022.


5 shifts defining marketplace development in 2022

Get the list of approach transformations in marketplace development that will help you shape your E-commerce strategy for 2022.

site_search_main.svg

Discover customer behavior trends of 2022 and E-commerce site search best practices that will help you meet customer expectations and boost sales. Read more >>

6 E-commerce Site Search Best Practices for 2022

Discover customer behavior trends of 2022 and E-commerce site search best practices that will help you meet customer expectations.

6 E-commerce site search best practices for 2022

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Security

Global retail E-commerce sales are expected to reach <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/288487/forecast-of-global-b2c-e-commerce-growth/" target="_blank">$4.13 trillion</a> this year as online buyers converge on their preferred platforms to buy essentials, luxuries, and everything in between.
As online retail continues to gather speed, E-commerce platforms are being targeted by cybercriminals looking to hack sensitive customer information and scam unsuspecting people.
According to the <a href="https://pdf.ic3.gov/2019_IC3Report.pdf" target="_blank">FBI IC3 2019 Internet Crime Report</a>, global E-commerce merchants reported a loss of over $3.5 billion to cyberattacks. This is why online merchants must secure their E-commerce websites and establish robust security measures to safeguard their data.

So, how can you protect your E-commerce platform and protect customer data?

## Know the areas of your platform to fortify

E-commerce merchants need to keep tabs on several channels, including:

### Admin side access

Admin portals shouldn't be easily accessible from just about any IP address.

Ensure you lock down cPanels so only permitted IP addresses can access your servers. Next, check if directories have the correct permissions. For example, you'll need to remove all 777 permissions that allow virtually anyone to read, write, and modify files.

Want to take it a step further? Install panel notifications for unknown IP log-in attempts that will alert you and other admins of any suspicious activity.

### Get a reliable VPN

Financial transactions over public networks are vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks where malicious users attempt to intercept information being transmitted.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) offers the best security in situations like these. It encrypts connections to secure offsite servers, eliminating the threat of third-party users who may be trying to intercept your data transmissions.

If you are looking to save costs opt for SSL-based VPNs, these are relatively affordable and still offer similar security specifications.

### Infrastructure security

Hackers are employing increasingly sophisticated tools to attack and phish information from online businesses. This means you can't prevent malware attacks by simply installing anti-virus software.

It may be time to invest in powerful application firewalls that let you block communications from unknown domains, and help regulate incoming and outgoing traffic.

Similarly, plugins also help to watch out for and deny unauthorized access to your infrastructure. These tools offer selective permeability that grants permission only to trusted users.

### User data

44% of organizations reported <a href="https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/security/invest-cyber-resilience" target="_blank">over 500,000 customer records</a> stolen over last year alone.

This is cause for concern as losing personal and financial information of your customers can be the reason for a lawsuit and mar your reputation as a responsible business, discouraging others from visiting your site or buying from you.

This is a liability you want to avoid. As a best practice, you should never store customers' credit card information on your servers. In the event of an attack, this leaves their information unprotected and exposed to misuse.

You might expect clients to get frustrated by re-entering their payment information time and time again. However, they'll be more than understanding of this once you take the time to explain that this is crucial to protecting them from fraud.

Likewise, guide your employees on how to manage sensitive customer information, and ensure they adhere to mandated security protocols, like non-disclosure of users' personal data via email.

### Workspace security

Online retailers can (and should) secure their SaaS and cloud-based workspaces against data breaches. Given that your employees access and manage sensitive company data on the cloud, centralizing this information can shield you from data leaks and theft.

To add to that, requiring employees to people to use multifactor authentication can prevent unauthorized access to corporate apps and files - thus strengthening your workspace security.

### Personal training

Simply put, one of the safest ways you can avoid malicious attacks and protect your business is to monitor your site for any suspicious activity.

You can leverage monitoring software that tracks user activity in real-time and notifies you of irregular behavior (in the case of cookied users) as well as questionable transactions.

## Security measures to implement

![E-commerce cybersecurity measures](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/e_commerce_security_measures_9e81be2ddc.svg)

### Internal audit

Regular internal audits can help you investigate red flags and identify phony profiles. They also highlight potential threats to your online business, such as customer information scrapping, malicious attack footprint, business logic abuse, and more.

Some areas you might want to reviews include:

- Security perimeter
- Consumer activity
- Data integrity

### 3rd-party audit

Conduct an inventory of any third-party solutions you run within your business. Continually assess their performance, and if you're not using them, remove their integrations from your systems.

Ideally, you should aim to allow as limited access to your data as possible. If you're not sure where to start, external auditing services can help you assess the value of your inventory - and where you can eliminate threats.

### Employees training

More than <a href="https://www.csoonline.com/article/3153707/top-cybersecurity-facts-figures-and-statistics.html" target="_blank">80% of reported security risks</a> are made up of phishing attacks - which are also widely recognized as the top data breach threat to organizations today. It's also one of the easiest ways that malicious users can access your database and misuse both customer and employee data.

If employees can recognize suspicious emails, they'd be less likely to give up sensitive information in the wrong hands. According to Barracuda Networks, spear-phishing emails were <a href="https://blog.barracuda.com/2020/03/26/threat-spotlight-coronavirus-related-phishing/" target="_blank">up by 667% in March alone</a>.

Educate your staff about security best practices and inform them of how to defend themselves against spammy emails and phishing links left in comments on your website. Urge them to alert these IDs to management, who can then take action to identify and eliminate the threat.

### Disaster recovery

In the event of a data breach, the best security measure you can take is to make frequent backups of your E-commerce website and mission-critical data. This way, it becomes easier to retrieve information from your hosting provider and restore normalcy to your platform as soon as possible.

Ensure you have a plan in place for managing customer concerns and securing your business during this time, as you'll need to reassure customers you have things under control.

### Plan testing

As an added safety precaution, perform regular vulnerability scans across your E-commerce website and assess security gaps that hackers can exploit. This is crucial, especially when you're testing out new features and functionality before updates go live.

## Key takeaways

Research states <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/04/28/2023282/0/en/Arkose-Labs-Reveals-20-Spike-in-Fraud-as-Digital-Behavior-Shifts-During-COVID-19.html" target="_blank">approximately 445 million cyberattacks</a> have occurred since the start of 2020.

It only takes one successful attempt to access your database - and your entire business is compromised. Protect your brand and your reputation by evaluating your security measures and consider how each can be optimized to fortify your business against external threats.

Ultimately, offering your clients robust security in the face of data threats will help you build their confidence and gain their loyalty.


Learn ways to boost the security of your E-commerce platform and get handy tips on how to do it fast.

Cybersecurity best practices for E-commerce merchants

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The <a href="https://www.retailresearch.org/online-retail.html" target="_blank">center for Retail Research</a> published a report which suggests that e-commerce is the fastest-growing retail market in Europe. With the Coronavirus pandemic keeping millions of local businesses in lockdown, the global E-commerce market is undoubtedly going to <a href="https://www.statista.com/study/42335/ecommerce-report/" target="_blank">surpass 2 trillion dollars</a> by the end of 2020.

Many successful and aspiring entrepreneurs regard E-commerce as one of the most accelerated and efficient systems for reaching successful outcomes online. And to become a successful E-commerce enterprise, business owners will need to do a lot more than just identifying a product niche, set up a website, or advertising to potential customers.   Therefore,   they will need to improve their search in e-commerce to provide   "almost perfect"   search queries for potential customers looking for a specific need.

With regards to a recent E-commerce search experience report by The Baymard Institute, you'd be surprised by the outcome. Out of the 50-e-commerce website evaluated, 34 percent of search queries on their website don't usually reveal useful results, and 70 percent of those search engines on those websites do not show relevant product similarities.

![Search Query Support Among Top 50 US E-Commerce Sites (1).png](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/Search_query_support_among_top_50_US_E_commerce_sites_72b947df27.svg)

Whether you manage a small online store or a big E-commerce website, ensuring your e-commerce site search is consistently enhanced to provide frictionless user experience is vital for higher conversion.

All E-commerce website visitors are unique. Some visitors already know what they want to buy, while others look for entertainment - surfing through the latest trends, product images,  description,  or checking out the information.   Nonetheless,   no matter the site visitors, whether browsers or researchers, you can use them to your advantage with your federated search information.

It's important to know that every element on an E-commerce site has a role to play for the success of the site, the same way different shoppers rely on various aspects on the site to shape their user experience. Extensively, online customers can be separated into two transcendent sorts: researchers and browsers.

Researchers are goal-driven shoppers to purchase soon. They already have the idea of what they want but will probably be searching for the most suited option from their search in E-commerce sites.

Researchers may surf through your website multiple times, gathering information before they decide to make a purchase.

On the other hand, browsing shoppers visit an E-commerce site to see what is new, famous, and what's on sale.

They go to their favorite website or a new section to stay up on the latest trends, window-shop for future purchases, or to kill time. Whatever the case may be, having people spend time on your site can be intuitive for your brand. If they are the excellent user experience your site has to offer, they'll be more likely to revisit your site when they are ready to make a   purchase.   While they are busy getting entertained,   you,   the business owner has the opportunity to gather valuable information about your visitor, which can help you turn those browsers into buyers.

Another intense research from the Baymard Institute suggests that E-commerce site search is undoubtedly found to be the preferred product finding strategy by shoppers as they perceive it to be faster than category navigation. In this regard, Effective site search plays a direct, quantifiable role in increasing sales revenue, so working towards improving and optimizing your product inventory will directly affect the success of your search in e-commerce.

When on-site search is compared to other metrics, site search is usually ignored. Business owners prefer to pay attention to optimizing personalized emails or landing pages. In contrast, almost all product-focused buyers use on-site search to hasten their buying journey on an E-commerce website.   And if your website happens to lack the efficiency and accuracy they want, they will look elsewhere.

Your on-site search plays the role of your sales team. Nonetheless, taking the necessary steps to improve your site search can lead to happier customers who eventually convert to real paying clients.

There are three primary ways shoppers can find products on an E-commerce site.

![Jeans_.png](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/Jeans_5cdcfc2aa2.png)

- Category   Browsing:   occurs when shoppers surf through categories and narrow down to see the items they are searching for in the subcategories.
- Keyword Search: happens when a potential shopper uses the on-site search bar to find products using closely related keywords. The keywords can be short tail or long-tail keywords; internal, competitive, and industry-specific.
- Faceted Search occurs when shoppers refine their search by narrowing the results through search filters. For instance, it can be filtered into length, size, brand, or weight; this type of search filters can be searched on the Amazon website. It will be an excellent opportunity to integrate a solution that will help achieve your search goal - such as enterprise search, or database search engine into your faceted Search to produce more search relevant information to your site visitors.

Several factors contribute to whether shoppers can easily find products through on-site search. These factors make it easier to provide the nearest search queries to visitors, which include synonyms, predictive search, misspellings, and type-ahead. Big websites like Amazon have integrated enterprise search as a service software to ensure their on-site search is performing efficiently.

For instance, Amazon tries to find relevant, accessible, and informative content to provide to its customers. The website uses a sophisticated search algorithm that has one primary objective; bring shoppers closer to relevant products as fast as possible. Basically, the Amazon search algorithm works similarly to google search algorithm. It analyses merely search queries for relevant keywords and matches customers' needs with related products in that niche.

Aside from providing engaging value to its customers, Amazon has access to a considerable amount of data to use for search engine results. This benefit is linked to the fact that Amazon is a self-contained platform, gathering data from many sources and storing them within its big data infrastructures.

Amazon uses the A9 ranking algorithm, whose primary purpose is to deliver a spectacular customer experience, thereby leaving the customer hooked on the website. It achieves this by analyzing different pieces of information to determine the most accurate and valuable product to appear in the search queries. The algorithm usually considers the following criteria to rank the product according to search relevance. They include: keywords, customer reviews, performance history, delivery time, and, most importantly, sales conversion.

## Conclusion

Whether you are a small or big E-commerce website, the importance of search in E-commerce cannot be overemphasized. Search is relevant and improving search leads to better conversions and engaging shopper experience.


Learn how optimized internal search leads to better conversions and improves overall user experience.

How search affects sales in E-commerce

search.png

An E-commerce store without an in-house search is like a grocery store without labels. You'd be left wandering down the aisles of the store with the hope of finding what you are "searching" for by chance. For the store owner, this is a bad practice as some customers might get jaded before finding anything, and the outcome of this means no or little business. This case can also be applicable to an E-commerce store if we replace the offline attendants with the online visitors who use the search widget.
 
The efficiency of the internal search has surpassed the need for navigation on the website by users and has also become a great tool for the store owners. It helps to drive sales and increase conversions. 
 
The tech surrounding the functionality of the search widget is beyond the generic search present on most websites as this only gives results based exclusively on the search keyword. For example, if the word "shirt" is typed into the search bar, the search results are not expected to go beyond the word "shirt", and we could say this type of search is based strictly on the search keyword and not influenced by the user experience and the other factors.
 
![Copy of cases-image-1.png](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/Copy_of_cases_image_1_57331e4918.png)
 
Currently, there are two main options that we will describe at a high level in this post. For most CTOs this sounds like "build vs buy" and in many cases. The decision depends not only on what is better but what kind of company you are in: are you a tech-first company or a business-first company.
 
## Building an in-house search for E-commerce

Building an E-commerce search yourself involves the configuration of a search engine, like <a href="https://wise-engineering.com/expertise/elasticsearch-integration/">Elastic site search</a>, ManticoreSearch, or Solr. There are a handful of search features to consider and scope when building an E-commerce search, for example, search types, autosuggest, typo tolerance, and many other built-in features.
 
These solutions provide a very flexible search platform. Setting it up can take a month at most, and this relies upon certain factors, for example, the number of products in the catalog. The need to structure and optimize data for search cannot be left out as it is crucial to the solution functionality. The data should be prepared for the search integration. This might include:
- Normalizing attribute values.
- Configuration of basic and advanced features that would improve user experience.
- Structuring and optimization of data then the ranking of search results based on their relevancy.

Pros and cons of using self-hosted search

![Pros and cons of self-hosted search.png](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/building_in_house_search_c2cdd352f3.svg)

## Adopting 3rd-party vendor
 
SaaS companies specialize in specific niches and always optimize their products to get excellent results based on the niche the product specializes in. They have focused on creating an efficient site search that possesses features like text auto-complete, spell checker, natural language processing (NLP), advanced stemming, and more.

Pros and cons of using SaaS

![Adopting 3rd-party vendor](https://wise-site.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/adopting_3rdparty_vendor_b9503a7048.svg)

## Where to start?

If you are wondering where you should start while doing your research on how to improve search on your site there are a few questions to answer first. Do you know what problem you are solving or what goal you pursue? If so – great. If not, you might want to start by analyzing a few basic metrics to understand how your search performs and how it affects sales.

**Conversion Rate**

Conversion rate is arguably the most important metric, it has a significant impact on your site's profitability. When your website search functions as well as it should, it becomes a salesman that leads users to their desired destination pages. This way, search helps to engage and convert potential customers.

**Bounce Rate**

The bounce rate is the rate at which new visitors open your site and immediately click away without interacting with it. The lower the bounce rate, the better. A high bounce rate can mean several things and common problems include poor design, low usability, or high search time. This metric is a great indicator for improvement.

**Search Page Speed**

Page Speed is the amount of time that it takes for a web page to load. A page's loading speed is determined by several different factors. This issue can be solved by site search providers or the in-house development team.

**How Deep Search Users Go**

A lot of users get jaded after searching the first and second pages, so it's up to the search provider to optimize the search tool to bring results relevant to the keywords up on the search page. This data is very important to analyze while working on improving internal search.

**Relevancy Ranking**

The task of the search engine is to ensure that the best-matched results are shown up first. Search irrelevance turns into poor user experience and this affects sales directly. Constantly improving your data tagging, assessing site search performance, and tweaking your relevance algorithms will be key to search relevancy.

**A/B Testing**

This is an important tool that involves a performance comparison between two versions of software (a search results page, in this case). A/B testing can be used to determine which search changes to launch after monitoring certain metrics like the ones listed above. A/B testing approach will have significant implications for what kinds of changes you need to create, test, and then launch.

**Team Cooperation**

The last but not least significant thing to start with is building an in-house team for E-commerce development or hiring an outsourcing partner. Experienced engineers, data analysts, and marketers are required to work in an across-functional team. Look for people with an expertise-based approach that have experience with internal search integration and optimization specifically.

*** 
To sum up, the pros and cons of both options have to be considered in terms of how it fits the E-commerce store and the budget, among other factors. Choosing how to develop your E-commerce search, shouldn't be a decision to jump into. Start with defining what goals you want to achieve by working on search and evaluating all options carefully.
 
Wise Engineering experts provide consulting services on [custom E-commerce development](https://wise-engineering.com/expertise/e-commerce/) and will gladly discuss your tech challenges and business goals via call or email. 

Get handy tips on how to integrate in-house search to your E-commerce platform and steps to start.

Building an in-house search for E-commerce | Wise Engineering Blog

Get handy tips on how to integrate internal search to your E-commerce platform and steps to start.

Building an in-house search for E-commerce

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## Problem

Nowadays search becomes a primary source of resource discovery. So having a modern search engine that powers it is a vital part of a marketplace or other E-commerce site. E-commerce platforms contain gigabytes of data, usually not well structured and being input by different sellers so searching within it is not a trivial thing.

There are a variety of site search engines and services built on top of them so it is not an easy thing to choose the one that will perfectly fit requirements and be a good platform for further search results optimization and improvements.


## Goals and challenges

- Choose between SaaS and self-hosted engines
- Flexible search results tuning mechanisms
- Relatively low infrastructure maintenance
- Reach search experience features implemented


## How Wise Engineering helped
We have created a list of available search engines and services on a market that fit the required goals. Helped to create an evaluation matrix with a list of required search features and tuning capabilities. Filtered candidates to 2-3 vendors and created a plan for further evaluation of search results, integration efforts and further infrastructure maintenance.


## Results
- Created a finalized list of 2-3 potential vendors to evaluate.
- Listed search features to be added with new search vendor.
- Planned further evaluation process, tools and KPIs.
- List regressions and workarounds if current search implementation has some specific use cases.


## Implementation process

### Evaluation matrix
First, we created a long list of search engines and services and combined them into a matrix where we’ve put features and capabilities we want to have in a new search engine or provider. Each feature has its weight so it sets priorities and helps to evaluate a final result better. Some engines/providers may have features implemented in a different way and not always meet requirements. In this case, additionally to feature weights we created another feature evaluation dimension with three simple states as “doesn’t meet requirements”, “par” and “exceeds requirements”. So if the feature we want to have in search is important (which is defined in its weight) but has “doesn’t meet requirements” value for it we exclude this search engine/provider from the further evaluation process. At this point, we had an evaluation matrix with only 3 engines and services left that met all the requirements we’ve set on the first step. It was a mix of services and engines to be self-hosted so we needed to create different evaluation and implementation plans for them.

### Sales calls and estimation
For services, we scheduled calls with the sales team and went over features we wanted to have, implementation concerns, etc. At this step, it was important to estimate an annual cost of search service according to the features we want, search rates, potential index size, etc. The final price was an important factor in final vendor decision making. For self-hosted engines, we calculated an estimated hardware quantity required to support the search. Also, estimated a potential ops time required to support search infrastructure which also leads to additional cost.

### Demo search results evaluation
There are a few more additional steps we took to help. We created a step by step plan for demo search evaluation. This plan included a mockup of possible search results evaluation tool to run side by side comparison of current search results and demo search setup with new vendors and services. We also created a regression list of features in current search implementation and possible workarounds in new ones. There were some domain-specific search filters and search query expansions that weren’t possible to port to every new search candidate, so we designed a workaround for them to make sure new search candidates didn’t get rid of some search features users may have been used to.

## Results

Evaluation matrix and further vendors evaluation process have been created. We planned tools to be built and KPIs to measure and prepare for a final search engine decision recommendation, regressions, and possible workarounds. A list of new and modern search features has been created, they will be implemented after a new search vendor is chosen and integrated.


Check out the main steps of the site search implementation and how the right tech team can help.

Wise Engineering Blog