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How Jomashop improved

customer experience with shift
to Magento 2 PWA and Algolia
“Because we’re highly customized, we use Algolia like a SaaS (software as a service)
that we build on, but with that said Algolia is so important to our tech stack and our
performance metrics. We’ve seen conversion lift from Personalization and Search and
Recommend, as well as reduced bounce rates from Recommend.”
Isaac Montaine, Vice-President, Product and SEO, Jomashop.com

CASE STUDY
1
 Headquarters: Brooklyn, NY
Use Case: E-Commerce
Customer Since 2019
Integrations: Magento 2 PWA
Feature Usage:
Search API, Dynamic
Synonyms, Recommend,
Click & Conversions, Rules,
Personalization, Query
Suggestions, A/B Testing
● Conversion lift of 4-5%
from Personalization
● 7% lift in conversions from
Search
● Reduced bounce rate by
15-18% with Algolia
Recommend
● Fast to implementation
● Ease of use by all teams, across sites and products
● Freed up developer/engineering time
The Challenge The Solution The Results
● Need for Magento ● Integrated with Magento ● Dramatically improved
integration with plug-in support customer experience
● Small in-house
● Able to build on for ● 4-5% Conversion lift from
development team
highly customized Personalization
● 75,000 SKUs of product search experience
● Personalization for a ● 7% Conversion lift from
better user experience ● Consistent experience Algolia Search
across the tech stack
● Reduced bounce rate by
● SaaS-based solution for 15-18% with Algolia
the development team Recommend
CASE STUDY 2
Located in Brooklyn, New York City, Jomashop.com is a According to Isaac Montaine, Vice-President, Product and
leading fashion retailer with more than 75,000 products. SEO at Jomashop.com says this is predicated on shoppers
It offers watches, handbags, sunglasses, jewelry, beauty, being able to find what they want quickly and easily.
fine writing instruments, apparel, shoes, fragrances, and
And Montaine should know, he’s been with Jomashop for 12
gift items from over 650 leading international brands at
years, originally starting with a smaller set of
a discount.
responsibilities such as working on its eBay marketplace.
The company’s creed is that everyone should be able to Now as vice-president of product, Montaine sets
wear what they love and to do so with savings in mind. Jomashop’s roadmap for the next six months.
As such, its goal for more than 25 years has been to
While based out of the unique Brooklyn Army Terminal
deliver the best prices, the most varied selection, and
(BAT) warehouse complex in Sunset Park, today Jomashop
the finest service — earning the trust of its customers by
fulfills orders to every corner of the world.
combining discounts, great service, and a
state-of-the-art fulfillment facility.

CASE STUDY 3
 Improving transparency and user experiences
In 2019, the company migrated from its e-commerce
platform Magento 1 to Magento 2 PWA and required a
search solution that integrated with the platform and
provided a great user experience. They were using
Hawksearch at the time but wanted more
transparency into the search process.
“What we wanted to do was create a better search
experience than what we had at that time. We knew
we’d be moving to Magento 2, and if we were going to
change platforms, we needed a partner that was
compatible with the platform.” - Isaac Montaine,
Vice-President, Product and SEO, Jomashop.com
Jomashop ran A/B testing to test the experience using
Algolia with its new e-commerce platform and found it
met their need for integration and transparency. “The
results spoke for themselves,” Montaine says.
“The most important part of providing a good search
experience is making sure the product is working and
when it’s not working finding out why. And that’s what led
us to Algolia.”
Almost immediately, the company could determine how
and why items were ranking as they were in search, and
so were able to easily make improvements to better serve
their customers.
CASE STUDY 4
Jomashop also needed a custom implementation of Algolia,
modifying some of the Magento modules in the solution. While
it took a week to deploy Algolia, creating the custom search
solution Jomashop desired took the company’s system
integrator, Corra, approximately six weeks while simultaneously
rebuilding the Jomashop website on the Magento 2 PWA
platform.

Since then, it’s deployed more features from the Algolia stack.
Today it’s taking advantage of Algolia Search, Instant Search,
and Personalization. The company also recently deployed
Recommend (having switched from Nosto to create a
consistent experience and for improved results). It has
implemented Algolia in its test environment, on its website’s
search bar, as well in in-house built tools embedded into the
search bar: search history and trending searches.

CASE STUDY 5
“We implemented Algolia for
recommendations on all our product Search history lets returning customers pick up from previous searches, and

pages, so whether the product is in trending uses the Algolia API to give customers a view of the top searches.

stock or not, we have created When a customer enters a search, Jomashop provides the first six results for the

sections called ‘more choices’ and product, as well as the top 10 related keywords. That way, if the customer

‘you may also like.’ Those are all doesn’t find what they are looking for, they can explore based on the related

powered by Algolia Recommend.” searches.

- Isaac Montaine, Vice-President, Product The company recently added Algolia to its home page to display trending items
and SEO, Jomashop.com
in the watch category.

CASE STUDY 6
 Benefits abound from Algolia
Being able to pull the data from Algolia for trending
searches is not only of value to Jomashop.com customers
but can provide insights for the product team. In addition,
Jomashop can provide its buyers with insights into what
the store needs to carry based on search results
(especially “no results”), letting them know what’s in
demand.
“In 2021 there was a watch brand, and we were able to see
it right there in the “no search results” category, and I was
able to feed that right to the buying team,” he says.
Using Algolia and Magento, Jomashop has been able to
improve the overall user experience, create a cohesive
experience across their site and provide personalized results
and recommendations for their customers.
In addition to Agolia’s easy integration and partnership with
Magento, Jomashop’s conversion rate climbed by 7 percent
with Algolia over its previous search solution. He says Algolia’s
Magento plug-in acted as a kick-starter to development,
making it easy for developers to build on and uniquely
customize to further enhance user experiences.
CASE STUDY 7
The adoption of Algolia Recommend has improved the search
results for customers. By using the same stack for search,
personalization, and recommendations, Jomashop has been able to “By far Algolia Instant Search has
make better use of the data from Personalization to influence been the most beneficial to us. The
Recommend. “There’s no reason to have that data start from scratch ability for customers to get a
from another location when it can all be under one roof,” Montaine preview of the items so they’re able
says. “The customer profile that gets built up can be reused on the to shop while typing in the search,
product page, home page, and, in turn, results in more sales.” plus being able to see
recommendations (from
The impact of Algolia on Jomashop’s business is clear, Montaine
Recommend), just leads to a better
suggests. A/B Testing confirmed that the conversion lift from
experience for the customer. They
implementing Personalization through Algolia was between 4 and 5
can get to the product much
percent; meanwhile, Recommend has lowered the bounce rate by
faster.”
between 15 and 18 percent.

- Isaac Montaine, Vice-President, Product

Of course, at the end of the day, it’s all about serving up results to the
and SEO, Jomashop.com
customer, which using the full suite of Algolia solutions has had.

CASE STUDY 8
Algolia experts can help you take your site experience to the next level.
Get a customized demo from our search experts today.

www.algolia.com

CASE STUDY