I Can't Get No Satisfaction: How Orchid Toys Struggled to Optimize Search Experience

In a world where discussing sexuality and exploration is no longer taboo, sex shops have become an easy way for many people to find the products they need to improve their sexual experience. However, some people may still feel embarrassed to walk into an adult store and buy sex-related products. This is where e-commerce adult stores are invaluable. They offer customers a discreet way to purchase sex toys without facing any judgment or shame. No wonder this industry has grown dramatically over the years, from $10.07 billion in 2016 to $37.2 billion in 2022, and is predicted to reach $80.7 billion by 2030.

Despite the vast potential, not everyone would dare to open an adult store. Louis Wood, the founder of Orchid Toys, shared his experiences and struggles of running such a store.

Orchid Toys started off on BigCommerce in 2019. The business started well, but unfortunately, not everything went smoothly. The website was set up and optimized, products were added, but there was a problem: the team saw an overwhelming amount of searches with no results. Many products Orchid Toys offered had unusual titles, and some used brand titles that people commonly misspelled so they wouldn't appear in search results.

The team tried moving to Shopify – but that didn’t solve the problem, they still had a considerable amount of no-result searches.

Another issue was color swatches. The store had more than 400 custom colors, such as "berry bliss" instead of pink, and the theme color swatches simply weren't working.

The team also realized that their customers were unhappy with the search, as they often asked customer service to help them find the products they were looking for.

And Orchid Toys began their quest to find a solution to improve the search functionality. Their first step was to gather information on the best practices for optimizing search functionality and survey the customers to understand their search preferences and experiences on the site.

During their research, Louis discovered that numerous e-commerce businesses had succeeded in optimizing their search functionality by using search apps. He decided to test a few solutions to determine the best fit for his website.

However, finding the perfect fit was challenging because the apps they tested caused issues on mobile. The store had a theme with a sticky search bar on mobile that remained at the top while scrolling and many apps would break it.

Following a long hunt filled with trials, errors, and unfulfilled expectations, they finally found the right solution – Smart Search Bar & Filters app. With its help Orchid Toys achieved outstanding results:

• Search queries ending with no results decreased significantly, thanks to the smart search feature.
• The team improved the search results page by remapping 400 colors they had into a reasonable number of color swatches and setting up filters to show just 10 brands instead of hundreds.
• Integration with Judge.me enabled them to display product reviews in search, providing social proof for customers.
• Merchandising ensured that the most relevant results were pushed to the top.

As a result, the number of people asking customer service to help them find products has gone down as they now can find everything they need themselves.

Orchid Toys have greatly improved search experience by integrating the Smart Search Bar & Filters app into the company’s business processes. The app helped the team to reduce the number of search queries ending with no results, improved the search results page, and gave them valuable benefits, such as merchandising, integration with Judge.me, and color swatches. Most importantly, the team is no longer overwhelmed by customer service requests because customers are now able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily.