Starting point
An automotive spare-parts dealer focused on aftermarket. Over 200,000 OE original parts and more than 1 million cross-references to equivalent aftermarket parts. Daily revenue mid-six-digit, 80% of searches done directly with OE numbers.
The existing search:
- Full-text index with OE-number matching
- The cross-reference table existed in the PIM but was not active in search
- Customers entered exact OE numbers and got only the exact part
- Cross-sell rate on search orders: 4% (vs. industry median 11%)
Goal
First: activate cross-references so an OE input also surfaces all equivalent aftermarket results. Second: include stock availability in the ranking, so the in-stock result comes up first. Third: increase average order value through real cross-sell.
Implementation
Day 0–1: setup
Full indexing including the 1M-row cross-reference table from the PIM. For the first time, this was brought into a single search index, instead of acting as a separate lookup. Total setup time: 22 hours.
Day 2–4: ranking logic
Ranking rules defined:
- Exact OE match at position 1
- Equivalent aftermarket parts in stock at positions 2–6
- Original OE part out of stock (e.g. discontinued) visibly marked as “not available, alternative recommended”
- Cross-sell from the same product family at positions 7–10
Day 5–7: tuning
Cross-reference weighting adjusted: too many results from less relevant product families were initially shown. A tighter scope to directly equivalent variants noticeably improved result quality.
Result
| Metric | Before | With Eywora |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-sell rate | 4% | 19% |
| Avg. basket value | €112 | €139 |
| Out-of-stock clicks | 23% | 5% |
| Bounce after OE search | 34% | 11% |
What’s not in the success story
Three honest points:
- The cross-reference data in the PIM was partly outdated. About 6% of links pointed to SKUs that no longer existed. These had to be cleaned up by the customer in a PIM cleanup, not an Eywora job, but a prerequisite for clean results.
- Cross-sell weighting is industry-specific. What works in a screw shop can be dangerous in brake components (safety parts). We added a hard rule: no cross-sells across safety classes.
- Vehicle-context searches (“fits VW Golf 7”) are still in tuning. Tecdoc integration is running, but not all vehicle variants are in the index. Roadmap item for Q2.
Economic impact
- +24% avg. order value on search sessions
- −78% out-of-stock clicks through stock-aware ranking
- +19 points cross-sell rate, by far the biggest lever
In the customer team’s own words
“We had the cross-references in our PIM for years. But our search never used them. With Eywora it was live within a week, and our average order value has been measurably higher ever since.”