Light­ing the Way

The Chal­lenge

Despite strong traf­fic and an engaged cus­tomer base, Nan­lite’s search func­tion­al­i­ty was­n’t quite ready for its close-up. Beyond search, their high­ly tech­ni­cal prod­uct cat­a­log demand­ed a more sophis­ti­cat­ed data archi­tec­ture. Stan­dard Big­Com­merce prod­uct fields could­n’t cap­ture the depth of spec­i­fi­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­al buy­ers need when select­ing light­ing equipment.

Ear­ly in their ecom­merce jour­ney, they need­ed a solu­tion to increase search effec­tive­ness, elim­i­nate spam attempts, man­age com­plex prod­uct data, and gain action­able insights into cus­tomer intent. In short, they need­ed to shine a light on the cus­tomer jour­ney itself.

 

The Approach

We iden­ti­fied Search­a­nise as the ide­al tool to improve Nan­lite’s onsite search expe­ri­ence, while rec­og­niz­ing that search alone would­n’t solve their prod­uct data chal­lenges. Their impres­sive traf­fic vol­ume, diverse cat­a­log, and ear­ly adop­tion spir­it made them a per­fect can­di­date for a com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion. Our mis­sion was to ele­vate their search expe­ri­ence and data archi­tec­ture to match the pre­ci­sion of their light­ing prod­ucts. Key goals includ­ed:
 

• Imple­ment­ing high­ly vis­i­ble, acces­si­ble search func­tion­al­i­ty across all devices — because if cus­tomers can’t find the search bar, they can’t find your products.
• Opti­miz­ing search promi­nence and usabil­i­ty with both a float­ing search icon and full-head­er search box, espe­cial­ly for mobile users.
• Archi­tect­ing a cus­tom metafield struc­ture to man­age com­plex tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions beyond Big­Com­merce’s stan­dard prod­uct fields.
• Inte­grat­ing Sal­si­fy PIM to cre­ate a sin­gle source of truth for prod­uct data that syncs seam­less­ly with BigCommerce.
• Pro­vid­ing com­pre­hen­sive ana­lyt­ics with­in Big­Com­merce back­end to under­stand real cus­tomer search behav­ior and intent.
   
   

The Solution(s)

We suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grat­ed Search­a­nise into their Big­Com­merce plat­form, with float­ing search, a fixed search icon that remains promi­nent­ly vis­i­ble as users scroll through any page, always acces­si­ble with a sin­gle tap, and a com­pre­hen­sive search bar inte­grat­ed into the site head­er for desk­top users.

Nan­lite’s pro­fes­sion­al-grade prod­ucts required detailed tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions. We archi­tect­ed a cus­tom metafield struc­ture inte­grat­ed with Sal­si­fy PIM. When Nan­lite’s prod­uct team updates tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions in their PIM, those changes auto­mat­i­cal­ly sync to the web­site. The result: accu­rate, com­pre­hen­sive prod­uct infor­ma­tion that helps pro­fes­sion­al buy­ers pur­chase con­fi­dent­ly with­out man­u­al data entry or ver­sion con­trol issues.

We also elim­i­nat­ed mali­cious traf­fic through Search­a­nise’s intel­li­gent fil­ter­ing, drop­ping spam and secu­ri­ty breach attempts to zero, and deliv­ered com­pre­hen­sive search ana­lyt­ics acces­si­ble in Big­Com­merce’s back­end — search terms, clicked prod­ucts, no-result reports, and par­tial match sug­ges­tions — empow­er­ing the Nan­lite team to fine-tune con­tent strat­e­gy based on real cus­tomer search expec­ta­tions and behav­ior patterns.