Success Story: "We Made $100,000 on Shopify with Searchanise in Just a Month"

Everyone has a mobile device now, from babies who watch cartoons on tablets to older people who use smartphones to call their grandchildren. You cannot live without a phone if you want to be part of the modern world and keep up with the times. At the same time, mobile devices are fragile and not durable. Manufacturers make phones and many other electronics to last only a certain period. For example, a few years ago, there were a few resonant media scandals related to large smartphone manufacturers slowing down their devices after a few years of use.

When a device breaks down, people often prefer buying a new gadget instead of repairing an old one. This results in overproduction, which harms the environment, as manufacturing new devices require lots of resources. At the same time, we could achieve an annual reduction of carbon emissions equal to the yearly amount produced by Ireland just by extending the lifespan of mobile devices by 33% (for instance, replacing it after 4 years instead of 3).

That was one of the driving factors for Carlos Maldonado, the CEO of Fixoem, to start his business. His idea was to help the environment by selling spare parts for devices and promoting sustainability among mobile users. Fixoem started as a small company, but now more than 90,000 clients visit their website every month.

Growing from a small business is a complicated process. Carlos and his team faced numerous challenges after the launch. Some of them included poor default search and an extremely low conversion rate of 0,8%!

The Fixoem support team frequently received questions from customers asking for a specific product they couldn't find even though it was in the catalog. Sometimes it took customers almost a day to make a purchase: they would search for something on the website, not find what they wanted, contact the customer support team, get a reply with a link to the desired product, and only then add it to the cart and pay for it.

Carlos and the team realized they had to improve the site search to convert visitors into paying customers more effectively.

First, the Fixoem team tried to increase search relevance by writing detailed product descriptions, including a lot of synonyms. They tried to think about how their customers might look up specific products. For example, in Mexico, people searching for "iPhone" sometimes type in "ifon" because this is how it sounds in Spanish.

This extremely time-consuming job couldn't completely fix the search relevance issue. The team had to develop synonyms, as they didn't know what clients were looking for or what they entered in the search bar. They had a report from Shopify with top searches but didn't know what exactly they were missing.

When the team realized they couldn't fix the limitations of the default search themselves, they started to look for a solution. At the same time, they were exploring other ways to improve their store. In particular, they wanted to switch to a different theme.

After some time, they found a theme they liked from the company called Envato. Envato had integrations with other Shopify apps, and Smart Search Bar and Filters app by Searchanise was one of them. Carlos was curious and went to the app listing to learn more about it. At this moment, he realized that Searchanise might be the key to the problem with the default search and installed the app immediately.

The app helped Fixoem to make the customer journey easier, leading customers to the products they were looking for. The best part was that most things worked automatically right after the app installation. Instant search provided suggestions right from the first keystroke. Auto-correct took care of spelling mistakes. And the search results loaded at lightning speed equipping customers with out-of-the-box filters to quickly narrow down the product list.

However, the Fixoem team wanted to maximize the benefits they got from the app and decided to set up synonyms. This allowed them to improve the search relevance further and ensure customers find what they want even if they use slang words.

The result was not long in coming. The conversion rate after installing Searchainse almost doubled, increasing from 0,8% to 1,5%. And in money, it was around one hundred thousand dollars! They made twice as much from the same amount of traffic. The company didn't need to spend more money on ads, add more products, or offer sales. They just needed to overcome the limitation of the default site search.

Another positive impact was reduced load on the customer support team. Shoppers didn't have to contact them as often as they used to because now they could find the products they wanted with a site search.

Making more money is great. Still, Carlos believes that Searchanise has some extra value for his business.

The industry Carlos works in is quite specific, as every phone has over 2000 parts. And there are hundreds of different phones. Some of them will break easier and have particular problems more often. Without Searchanise, it took Carlos months before he could understand the trend.

And now, he checks the search queries with no results in analytics provided by Searchanise and sees what customers are searching for and not finding. Carlos uses this information in his business strategy: he adds the products customers want before the competitors, making even more sales.

Searchanise has helped Fixoem to:

✔️enhanced the site search delivering relevant results despite typos and mistakes;
✔️reduced the load on customer support team, as clients find the products they need using site search;
✔️improved conversion rate from 0,8% to 1,5%;
✔️better understand trends and offer new products just in time.

We thank Carlos for the exciting success story and wish him and his team further business success!