“The improvements to search and navigation have really made a big difference to our end users. Search is so much faster and more relevant, and the filtering options have greatly improved.”

Mikoh’s Co-Founder

The History

The young and passionate surfer duo that founded Mikoh have a background in modeling. After traveling the world and seeing its beauty, it was important to them that their brand achieve the right look and feel.

While strong branding can be important in every industry, fashion requires it. From the website, to the packaging, and of course, the final product, everything needed to look and feel right in order for their brand to have a shot at being successful in the market.

To help them with this goal, Mikoh started out by utilizing Shopify’s built-in solutions for search and merchandising. While adequate for many stores, Mikoh needed to have better performance, and more control over what their end users saw. From the search results, to the arrangement of products on search and category pages, Mikoh just needed more.

The Navigation

From a performance perspective, Mikoh sells thousands of different products within only a few basic categories.

With navigation so simple, it can be challenging for shoppers to find the specific products they want within those base categories.

So Mikoh set out to provide improved navigation tools for their shoppers to ensure that finding the exact product they want will be as easy as possible.

While other non-specialized retailers could get away with a few filters for swimwear tops, Mikoh wanted their shoppers to be able to find exactly the product they wanted without having to scroll endlessly or visit multiple pages.

From looking at their analytics data, they can see that customers spend a lot of time refining the list of products they see on search and category pages. So it was important to Mikoh to improve these navigation options beyond what Shopify was able to offer.

“The visual nature of our business means we put a lot of effort into aesthetics. The Searchspring editor makes it so easy to put products where we want them. We can literally just drag and drop them wherever we want, and that’s not something we’ve been able to do before.” – Mikoh’s Co-Founder

To Start

Mikoh has used Searchspring to ensure that filtering options display based upon what items are in stock.

This helped to generate a drastic increase in sales, and improved engagement rates since filters no longer display if there are no associated products. This decreases visual noise and makes the filters far easier to use.

Filters now also appear inside Mikoh’s autocomplete, allowing users to find exactly what they need without even waiting for a page to load.

The speed and relevance of search has also made new types of interactions possible, above and beyond what the options available through Shopify’s default solution.

Prior to working with Searchspring, editing the layout of products on category pages could only be done by a developer.

Curating the End-User Experience

Beyond search, Mikoh set out to manage and refine all of their pages by manually curating what shoppers see.

Swimwear items such as bikini tops and bottoms are listed separately, but are often bought in sets. In a typical brick-and-mortar retail environment, matching products would be placed near each other on a rack.

Of course, there is a reason for this, and it has worked for retailers for decades. This visual continuity helps buyers see the products the way they’re meant to be seen, and allows them make decisions about what they like and dislike.

Online, however, this is typically not how items are displayed. But Mikoh sees the value in providing a logical coherence on their search and category pages, and places matching products near each other.

This is made possible using Searchspring’s drag-and-drop editor.

In addition to this manual curation of products, Mikoh also uses automated rules to optimize their entire site. For example, a rule is in place that boosts in-stock items to the top of all pages, ensuring that all out-of-stock items are shown last.

Other rules can also be used to promote products that are trending, or have above average conversion rates.

The Dedication

Mikoh and its founders are showing the swimwear industry that putting the extra time and effort into merchandising their store is worth it.