E-commerce Search That Converts, with Algolia and Meilisearch
Instant, typo-tolerant, faceted search and discovery that turns browsers into buyers, built on Algolia or Meilisearch.
Slow, literal search loses sales
For most stores, the search box is the highest-intent surface on the site: shoppers who search are far closer to buying than those who browse. Yet default database or platform search is usually slow, literal, and unforgiving. It returns nothing for a single typo, ignores synonyms, ranks products by whatever the database happens to return first, and offers clunky filtering that reloads the page. Shoppers who can't find a product in a few keystrokes assume you don't stock it and leave for a competitor. The problem compounds in multilingual markets, where the same catalog must serve queries in Arabic, German, Swedish, Bosnian, and English, each with its own spelling, word order, and accents. Weak search quietly caps conversion no matter how much you spend on traffic.
Purpose-built search and discovery
Hepek replaces default search with a dedicated engine, Algolia or Meilisearch, tuned around your catalog and how your customers actually shop. Results appear as-you-type, tolerate typos, understand your synonyms, and rank by relevance signals you control rather than database order. Faceted filtering lets shoppers narrow by brand, price, size, colour, and availability instantly, without a page reload. We instrument search so you can see what people look for, what returns nothing, and where they drop off, then tune relevance against that data. Whether you want a fully hosted service or an open-source engine you self-host for cost control and data sovereignty, we design, index, and integrate it into your storefront end to end.
How it works
- 1
Discovery & search audit
We review your catalog structure, current search behaviour, top queries, and zero-result searches. This reveals where relevance breaks down and shapes the indexing plan, facet strategy, and which engine, Algolia or Meilisearch, best fits your scale, budget, and hosting requirements.
- 2
Index design & data pipeline
We model your products into a clean, denormalised search index with the attributes shoppers filter and sort on. A pipeline keeps the index in sync with your commerce backend in near real time, so price, stock, and new products stay current without manual reindexing.
- 3
Instant, typo-tolerant search UI
We build an as-you-type search experience: a typeahead dropdown with product suggestions, categories, and thumbnails, plus a full results page. Typo tolerance and prefix matching mean shoppers find products even with misspellings or partial words across every supported language.
- 4
Faceted filtering & merchandising
We add instant faceted filters, brand, category, price ranges, size, colour, ratings, and availability, that update results and facet counts live. Merchandising rules let your team pin, boost, bury, or redirect results to promote campaigns and high-margin products without a developer.
- 5
Relevance tuning & synonyms
We configure ranking rules, custom business signals, and synonym dictionaries so 'trainers' matches 'sneakers' and regional spellings resolve correctly. Relevance is tuned per language and refined against real query data, not guesswork, so the right products surface first.
- 6
Analytics, monitoring & handover
We wire up search analytics to track top searches, click-through, conversion, and no-result queries, and set up dashboards and alerts. You get a documented setup and a tuning playbook so your team can keep improving discovery over time.
Technology
Algolia
A hosted search-as-a-service platform built for speed at scale. It delivers instant search, configurable typo tolerance, faceted filtering, custom ranking, synonyms, AI-driven personalisation and re-ranking, and rich analytics out of the box, with a distributed infrastructure that handles very high traffic and large catalogs. Its no-code merchandising tools let business teams control results without engineering, making it a strong fit when you want managed reliability and enterprise-grade features without running servers.
Meilisearch
A fast, open-source search engine you can self-host or run as managed cloud. It ships typo tolerance, faceting, filtering, sorting, synonyms, and hybrid keyword-plus-semantic search with a developer-friendly setup, and offers strong multilingual handling. Because it's open-source, it gives you cost control, data sovereignty, and no per-query vendor lock-in, an ideal choice for teams that want powerful search on predictable costs or need to keep data in-region.
Benefits
Higher conversion from search
Shoppers who search convert at a much higher rate than those who browse. Instant, relevant, typo-tolerant results get high-intent buyers to the right product in a few keystrokes, turning your search box into a revenue driver instead of a dead end.
Fewer dead ends
Typo tolerance, synonyms, and prefix matching mean misspellings and alternate wording still return results. We actively hunt down zero-result queries and fix them, so shoppers rarely hit an empty page and abandon the visit.
Effortless filtering
Instant faceted filters let customers narrow a large catalog by the attributes that matter to them, with live result and facet counts and no page reloads, making even a huge product range feel easy to shop.
Relevance you control
Custom ranking rules and merchandising let you surface in-stock, high-margin, and campaign products first, aligning search results with business goals instead of leaving them to database order.
True multilingual discovery
We tune search per language so queries in Arabic, German, Swedish, Bosnian, and English each return relevant, correctly-ranked results, serving cross-border and multilingual markets from a single catalog.
Decisions backed by data
Search analytics show exactly what customers look for, what converts, and what fails. That feedback loop lets you keep tuning relevance and merchandising, so discovery improves month over month.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use Algolia or Meilisearch for e-commerce search?
Choose Algolia when you want a fully hosted, enterprise-grade service that scales to very high traffic and large catalogs with rich AI personalisation, no-code merchandising, and analytics built in, and you're comfortable with usage-based SaaS pricing. Choose Meilisearch when you want an open-source engine you can self-host or run as managed cloud for cost control, data sovereignty, and predictable pricing, with strong typo tolerance, faceting, and hybrid search. Hepek helps you pick based on your catalog size, traffic, budget, and hosting needs, and can build on either.
What is faceted search and why does it matter for online stores?
Faceted search lets shoppers filter results by multiple product attributes at once, such as brand, price range, size, colour, rating, and availability, with the result set and filter counts updating instantly. It matters because it makes large catalogs navigable: instead of scrolling endless results, customers drill down to exactly what they want in seconds. Both Algolia and Meilisearch support fast faceted filtering, and Hepek designs the facets around how your customers actually shop.
How does typo tolerance improve search results?
Typo tolerance returns relevant products even when a shopper misspells a query, so 'shose' still finds 'shoes'. Search engines like Algolia and Meilisearch allow a configurable number of typos based on word length and match on prefixes as the user types. This prevents empty result pages, a leading cause of search abandonment, and is especially valuable in multilingual stores where accents and spelling vary across languages like Arabic, German, and Swedish.
Can search results be tuned to promote specific products?
Yes. Beyond default relevance, you can set custom ranking rules and merchandising to boost, pin, bury, or redirect results. That lets you surface in-stock items, high-margin or seasonal products, and campaign collections at the top of relevant searches. Algolia offers no-code merchandising tools for business teams, and Meilisearch provides search rules and a visual editor; Hepek configures whichever engine you choose to match your commercial goals.
Does the search support multiple languages?
Yes. Hepek configures multilingual search so a single catalog serves queries in Arabic, German, Swedish, Bosnian, and English, with per-language tuning for spelling, accents, synonyms, and ranking. Both Algolia and Meilisearch handle multiple languages, including non-Latin scripts, so cross-border and regional shoppers get relevant results in their own language.
How do search analytics help improve conversion?
Search analytics reveal what shoppers actually search for, which queries return no results, and how searches convert into clicks and purchases. Acting on that data, adding missing products or synonyms, fixing zero-result queries, and boosting the products that convert, steadily lifts relevance and revenue. Hepek instruments search analytics from launch and provides a tuning playbook so improvement is continuous, not a one-off.
Ready to make search a growth engine?
Hepek designs and builds fast, relevant e-commerce search on Algolia or Meilisearch, with faceted filtering, tuned relevance, and analytics that keep converting. Tell us about your catalog and markets at info@amygdal.com and we'll recommend the right approach.