Enhancing ROPO at GLOBUS Markthallen by replacing Elasticsearch with FactFinder

Andreas has been driving innovation at GLOBUS Markthallen for four years, turning the online platform into a reflection of the incredible variety you’ll find in their stores. As owner of the product catalog, Andreas is all about making online shopping just as satisfying as visiting a GLOBUS market in person. One of Andreas’ biggest wins? Replacing an open-source Elasticsearch solution with FactFinder’s AI-powered search and product discovery platform. The result? A smoother, smarter shopping experience for customers and fewer headaches for the team behind the scenes.

GLOBUS Markthallen is a family-owned company and one of Germany’s leading supermarket chains, with 65 stores nationwide. From everyday groceries and non-food items to their unique in-house creations, GLOBUS is all about fresh, local and high-quality products. Visit their online shop.

Solution

To personalize search and availability, GLOBUS implemented the Geo module. The website detects a visitor’s location and sends it to FactFinder, which instantly returns customized results for that store, including products, filters, prices and availability. AI-powered tools improved search accuracy with features like automatic result optimization, synonym recognition and analytics, enabling a smooth product discovery experience. “We were able to bring our entire product catalog to all customer-facing platforms with minimal effort while offering a high-quality search experience,” Andreas explains. Merchandising features also play a key role, letting the team highlight specific items, promote product sets and add banners or filters to themed pages. This makes it simple to align offline promotions, like print flyers, with the online store. “The versatility makes FactFinder a truly valuable tool for us,” Andreas adds.

Advantages of FactFinder compared to an open source search solution

• Reliable search algorithms refined for over 20 years
• Proven increase in conversion rates through A/B tests
• Planned time and cost instead of unpredictable development costs
• Minimal IT resource commitment
• Predefined modules for merchandising, personalization, recommendations and more
• Intuitive user interface designed for business users
• Dedicated support and consulting
• Future-proof technology through regular updates

Results

With its new solution, GLOBUS now delivers a high-performance, location-based product search that impresses both visitors and colleagues. Complaints about search quality are a thing of the past. “It’s been over two years since we’ve had a single complaint,” says Andreas, highlighting the significant improvement in product discovery. Data quality issues have been resolved through optimizations like regularly integrating synonyms. Visitors now enjoy accurate, location-specific search results, improving satisfaction, loyalty and the ROPO effect.

The platform’s flexibility has also boosted efficiency for the eCommerce team, reducing time spent fixing search issues and allowing more focus on strategic tasks like product presentation. “We actually use the solution not just as a search engine but also as a product data source for marketing campaigns and other channels,” Andreas explains, showing its central role in GLOBUS’s online strategy.