“We had tried two other search and merchandising providers and were still plagued with low conversion and high bounce rates. Searchspring was the first provider that had a very intuitive interface and strong relevancy out of the box. They were able to turn our metrics around in 90 days and have been a pleasure to work with.”

Reggie Ross
Technical Director, MetroKitchen

The Brand

MetroKitchen is a veteran in the online kitchen retail world. They opened their doors in 1998, making them the first website to sell top cooking brands.

They pride themselves in being family-owned and operated, and offer the fastest shipping and the best customer service in their field. The fact that they sell the most well-known cooking brands combined with their consumer-friendly policies has made them one of the top brands in the online cookware space.

The Challenges

MetroKitchen had spent years with various search and navigation providers but still continued to suffer from low conversion rates. Most shoppers come to the site knowing exactly what kind of product they want. While the brand is not always critical, the materials, quality, and size are important. MetroKitchen’s past providers were unable to quickly search and filter based on material and dimension causing high bounce rates and low conversions.

“We had tried two other search and merchandising providers and were still plagued with low conversion and high bounce rates. Searchspring was the first provider that had a very intuitive interface and strong relevancy out of the box. They were able to turn our metrics around in 90 days and have been a pleasure to work with,” says Reggie Ross, Technical Director at MetroKitchen

The Solutions

MetroKitchen decided to partner with Searchspring to help solve their relevancy problems due to their experience and industry track record. Their ecommerce search algorithms have strengths across multiple retail verticals which include retailers who sell products with a variety of brands, dimensions, and measurements. For example, the measurement algorithm is able to analyze and produce results across 30 variations of dimensions and measurements, which is particularly important to MetroKitchen.

A high percentage of searches on MetroKitchen’s website includes a size variable. Searchspring’s measurement intelligence understands that “12”’, “12in”, and “twelve-inch” all mean the same thing, and crucially, doesn’t require manual synonym management to do this. This saves hundreds of hours every year for MetroKitchen and other retailers on the platform.

The Results

What kind of improvement did MetroKitchen experience after migrating to Searchspring? The more relevant site experience was immediately evident in MetroKitchen’s engagement metrics. Their bounce rate decreased by more than 75% in the months following integration, while search usage more than doubled, leading to incredible revenue growth.

“We’re amazed to see how much revenue can be driven by search. Even though about 90% of our shoppers prefer to browse our categories, almost half our revenue now comes from search. We’re extremely happy with these results, and with how easy it has been to work with Searchspring.” – Romane Vernet, Senior Designer/Developer at MetroKitchen

Making it easy for MetroKitchen’s shoppers to find the products they want has led to a 15% overall improvement in their global conversion rates year-over-year.