Allens Boots

Giving Poor Search Results the Boot

The limitations of the built-in search on Allens Boots’ Magento platform frustrated their customers with overwhelming, irrelevant or non-existent results. For example, if shoppers searched for “red boots,” they received all results for “red” and all results for “boots” (not very helpful when the majority of products sold on the site are boots).

In addition, a built-in search could not support the omnichannel experience many of Allens Boots’ online shoppers look for. Shoppers often visit the physical location, take pictures of boots they like or write down an item’s name or product number. Later, they visit the online store, head straight to the search box, and type in the item’s name or product number. Their built-in search couldn’t support such narrow inputs, so the all-too-frequent results were “no results.”