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B2B DACH

FactFinder replaces Solr:
Ehlert enhances B2B experience

Key results

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12% conversion rate


overall

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Quicker and easier


shopping experience

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Reduced


support query volume

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Meet Philipp Ehlert,

CEO, Managing Director


Philipp Ehlert is the Managing Partner and CEO of Gustav Ehlert GmbH & Co. KG and leads the company into its fourth generation. Besides handling day-to-day operations and strategic direction, he oversees the eCommerce and marketing sectors. From campaign management to product data maintenance, all the way to optimizing the customer experience, Philipp ensures his every teams excel when it comes to running the online shop.

Gustav Ehlert, a family-owned business, is a specialized wholesale dealer for the food production industry. In their one-stop shop, customers can find everything they need for their daily requirements, including hygiene equipment, natural and synthetic meat casings, packaging, cleaning agents as well as spices and additives. The company is known among its clients for the highest food safety standards and quick delivery times. In 2024, Gustav Ehlert will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Visit their online shop.

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Challenge


Gustav Ehlert carries a complex B2B assortment of nearly 20,000 products. To streamline the ordering process, it’s crucial for customers to easily find all the products they need for their specific applications, in the right size and material. “Nearly every customer uses the onsite search function,” Philipp notes. However, the previous search solution, based on Solr, did not deliver the desired performance because it only worked with simple text comparisons.

For example, searching for "vacuum seal bags" instead of the synonym "meat bags" would fail to yield the desired results. “Shoppers always received search results, but in 90% of the cases, it wasn’t what they were looking for,” Philipp explains. This led to numerous support queries, which had to be resolved over the phone or via chat – far from ideal for an online shop. The solutions in use at the time could not address these issues, prompting Philipp to adopt FactFinder’s product discovery platform.

Solution


Despite the numerous product variations, specifications and other B2B-specific complexities in Gustav Ehlert’s online shop, the integration of FactFinder was quick and smooth. “Overall, everything was top-notch,” Philipp recalls. “The project and collaboration were truly pleasant.” FactFinder now processes over 15,000 onsite search queries from around 3,500 shop visitors each month. Both the search results and category pages are intelligently sorted to ensure the right products appear at the top. The sorting takes into account not just the relevance determined by FactFinder, but also the current popularity of products and the dynamic ranking rules set by the eCommerce team.

Advantages of FactFinder compared to an open source search solution:

  • Reliable search algorithms that have been 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, etc.
  • Intuitive user interface for business users
  • Personal support and consulting
  • Future-proof through regular updates

Results


How has the new product discovery solution impacted the operations at Gustav Ehlert? Philipp notes that the ordering effort has significantly decreased with FactFinder, reducing the resources tied up in customer support: “We receive far fewer inquiries about where to find certain products.” He also points out that the current conversion rate stands at a robust 12% – well above the average conversion rate of 2.4% in the manufacturing sector. “All this makes us very satisfied,” Philipp emphasizes.

FactFinder provides us with a fast, streamlined and simple solution that leads customers to find what they’re looking for, and then convert.
PHILIPP EHLERT
CEO

Essential features for Gustav Ehlert

Aligning search results to customer expectations and business objectives
With FactFinder’s ranking rules, Philipp and his team can fine-tune their online storefront to seamlessly reflect the latest sales strategies. The system’s ability to dynamically prioritize new products means they stay in the spotlight. Philipp sums it up well: “I like that the ranking dynamically adjusts. I don’t have to go into the backend every two days to change the order when new products are added.” This automation not only keeps their offerings fresh but also minimizes manual effort. Even so, the intuitive backend ensures that when the team chooses to make adjustments, they can do so with just a few clicks, perfectly blending automation with the option for manual intervention. At FactFinder, we call this appoach ’authentic intelligence’.
Aligning search results to customer expectations and business objectives
Valuable insights into the shop's performance
With FactFinder Analytics, Philipp now has all the tools necessary to identify optimization opportunities and take appropriate action – whether it involves synonyms, antonyms or ranking rules. “I can easily make adjustments in the backend and track exactly how the KPIs evolve.” FactFinder Analytics provides detailed insights into the search and click behavior of shoppers in the Ehlert shop. All KPIs are visually presented and can be compared over any period to quickly identify measures that enable maximum conversion.
Valuable insights into the shop's performance
Expert advice - automated and fully digital

Feature coming soon

Philipp has some great ideas for the future on how to enhance the shopping experience and make shop management even more efficient. Among these is the introduction of FactFinder's guided selling campaigns. This tool leads customers through a question-and-answer process, filtering the results list precisely according to their needs. "We want to offer our customers another way to selectively choose products," explains Philipp. "For example, when it comes to artificial casings, we can ask what it should be able to do, what color it should be, and what caliber it should have. These campaigns are a great way to make shopping even easier for customers."
Expert advice - automated and fully digital
The right offer to the right customer at the right time

Feature coming soon

Philipp also plans to test the Customer-Specific Info module. This allows for more flexible control of individual conditions in the Ehlert shop and direct implementation via search and navigation. This enables the eCommerce team to implement complex pricing scales or special discounts more easily and to restrict or expand the visibility of the assortment for certain customers.
The right offer to the right customer at the right time
AI saves time in search optimization

Feature coming soon

The introduction of FactFinder’s GPT Synonyms is also on the agenda. This tool uses large language models to automate the creation of synonyms for search optimization. With just one click, a list of relevant synonyms for a selected search query can be created – saving up to 70% of the time typically spent on search optimization.
AI saves time in search optimization

What's next?

The integration of FactFinder has had a consistently positive impact on customer experience, satisfaction and resource efficiency at Gustav Ehlert. The project has demonstrated to all involved that intuitive and seamless product discovery is crucial for success in B2B as well. Philipp and his team successfully turned the search feature in the Ehlert shop from a what was once a weakness into a strength. As a result, the company has set itself up perfectly for optimal customer retention and sustainable revenue growth in the future. "I'm really happy and would definitely recommend FactFinder," Philipp concludes.

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