See the demo of Algolia with Dribbble data here.

Your #1 frustration is over

Data, data, data. Today, you can hear a lot about it and how powerful it is. Although most websites do have a lot of data, they’re missing the right tool to deliver it to you. And you’re just drowning in it.

The reason is one simple word: “search”. Because web search is an established business model, many people tend to reduce it to Google. However, web search and searching the web are not the same thing anymore.

Web search is based on the TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) method. It is about finding how important are one or various terms to a document in a collection and returning the most relevant documents.

Though, the data changed and so did the way people are searching it. They now want to find that exact element in a large database of products, contacts, images, videos… And they want to find it directly within the website or the app they’re browsing.

In search, there is only one KPI and it’s the Return on Time Invested.

Because users have been used to a great experience on Google, they expect the same from any website. If they have to wait, even a few extra milliseconds, they’ll go back to Google. If they can’t find what they are looking for at first try, they’ll go back to Google. And they might choose another website also providing that product they were desperately looking for.

Moreover, more & more users now browse the web with their smartphone. This means they’re looking for velocity, but also tolerance. Typo-tolerance. Of course they want to find iPhone-related products even if they typed “ihpone”. Potential customers would better spend their time reviewing a product rather than looking for it.

Example of a broken search with Dribbble. Frustrating, right?

Finally, search is also about loyalty. If you can’t fulfill your users’ needs, you can’t expect them to be loyal.

Search as a Service is here and here is what it means

All these factors, added to the wide range of data people can look for, make search not only critical but also complex. Of course, no team can afford to spend the same amout of energy on its core product & its search engine. As having an ok-search is not ok, Search as a Service makes a lot of sense.

Algolia provides developers with an API that will allow them to build the perfect search engine. It is way better than any other search engine simply because it was built from scratch with the specific purpose of searching in databases. The startup then adresses a need which wasn’t answered before. Indeed, developers used to tweak existing search engines or frameworks based on the TF-IDF model to somehow adapt them to their needs. Obviously, this comes with a lot of work, sweat and time wasted, from conception to maintenance. Let alone the potential users -customers, subscribers- that were lost because of irrelevant responses from the search engine, leading to a poor search conversion rate.

Thanks to the API’s flexibility, developers can set it up to perfectly match their needs, according to the data their users search for. Algolia’s API has various killer features. Easy to implement, it’s all about velocity & relevance at the same time.

Before diving in, take a look at what using Algolia looks like, here with Dribbble data, using typo-tolerance, instant-search & filtering

It’s super easy to implement, because added to its JavaScript front-end API, loads of languages are supported, from Rails to Go & from C# to Objective-C. Last but not least, Algolia also integrates developers’ favorites platforms, from Parse to Magento. This means developers only need a couple hours to set it up.

It’s crazy quick, because you can make any search instant. Each time a user presses a key, the content of the page is updated, like it’s reading its mind. Yes, it means no page needs to be loaded from the server, drastically cutting the waiting time. It is even more powerful when users can play with a lot of filters & sorting parameters.

What search used to look like, one click at a time:

It’s relevant, because Algolia’s users can cook their ranking formula in a snap, through the dashboard -empowering even non-developers!- or via the backend API. Thanks to that formula, they can also let the users choose how to sort the data: according to the popularity, date posted, reviews, categories, types…

Setting up what data users can search for & how it should be ranked:

A lot of parameters can be defined, such as the typo-tolerance criteria:

As a conclusion, Algolia is the ultimate developer-oriented search engine, listening & answering to any of its users’ needs. This means constantly working on new features & integrations -the team is for instance now integrating Ionic & MongoDB. It also means making sure that every developer using Algolia meets success, thanks to a real-time support via chat.

Search is at the heart of users’ interactions with a website & its database. You wouldn’t consider going to a shop where you can’t find your shopping list items, would you? Then keep in mind that the search UX is vital. To put it simple, Algolia’s search service makes users’ needs, websites’ business goals & great technology meet.