CUSTOMER STORYCleaning up industrial search by solving the language and intent gap.

How an industrial absorbent manufacturer with 2,500 products serving 115 countries bridged the vocabulary gap between technical product descriptions and customer search terms.

“Lucidworks allows us to analyze user behaviors, find problem searches, and quickly use the query pipelines to fix those in a meaningful way.”

—John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

When industry jargon meets customer language

Industrial absorbent manufacturer New Pig had a problem that’s common in specialized industries. With approximately 2,500 products serving customers in 115 countries, they make “the world’s best stuff for leaks, drips, and spills,” but the industrial absorbent industry doesn’t always use the same vocabulary to describe their products that customers use when searching.

“They’re not looking for products. They’re looking for, ‘Give me something that cleans up water, but not oil.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

This terminology gap created a significant business challenge. Returning customers weren’t discovering newly available products they didn’t know by name, and first-time visitors were getting zero search results and abandoning the site before converting to customers.

What New Pig needed was a way to understand the intent behind search terms and match those intentions with products that provided solutions—without having to constantly rewrite their product descriptions.

“In our world, the product development folks don’t like their product descriptions changing. We needed a good way to get the right user experience without having to dismantle the descriptions we were given.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

The limitations of DIY search

New Pig’s previous search platform was built with DIY Apache Solr, which required developer maintenance and made it difficult for non-technical team members to curate the customer experience. Even after attempting to outsource their search functionality, they couldn’t solve the underlying challenge of connecting customer language with product descriptions.

After exploring alternatives, they discovered the Lucidworks Platform. Built on top of Solr, Lucidworks removed the heavy lifting that Solr required and provided the user-friendly interface New Pig needed to enhance their website’s customer experience.

“We’ve been able to use Lucidworks to refine our search results. There’s nothing really on the market that allows the level of control that Lucidworks does.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

Finding and fixing problem searches

With Lucidworks deployed on their website over six years ago, New Pig began using its AI capabilities to analyze user behavior patterns. This analysis helped identify search terms that weren’t performing well—queries that led to few clicks, abandoned carts, or zero results.

“Search is a critical component of the user experience on our website. It’s crucial that we try to get the user engaged as quickly as possible so they don’t leave the site.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

Using Lucidworks’ query pipelines, New Pig could curate search results for these problem queries to more accurately respond to customer requests without changing product descriptions. This capability allowed merchandisers and non-technical users to improve search results without requiring developer intervention.

Tracking the complete customer journey

New Pig’s data collection now covers the entire customer journey, providing insights that continuously improve the search experience.

“Currently we’re capturing search requests, clicks on products, add-to-carts, and conversions so we can look at a user’s session from end to end and really determine what clicks are selling products.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

This comprehensive view allows New Pig to understand which search terms lead to successful conversions and which need refinement, creating a feedback loop that constantly improves the customer experience.

Meeting evolving B2B customer expectations

As consumer expectations have evolved in the B2C space, B2B customers have come to expect the same sophisticated shopping experiences from industrial suppliers. New Pig has kept pace with these changes through Lucidworks’ evolving capabilities.

“Search has changed quite a bit. A lot more AI and machine learning coming along. A lot more personalization. Users are seeing that on B2C sites and they expect the same shopping experience in B2B.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

This evolution has also simplified New Pig’s workflow.

“If you’re collecting enough signal data from your users, you can get rid of a lot of that manual, tedious, look-at-the-analytics work and let the users define those behaviors for you. Then let the AI apply those behaviors to your search automatically.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

From search data to product innovation

Beyond improving search results, New Pig has leveraged search analytics to identify market opportunities. During the global pandemic, they analyzed search patterns to identify customer needs that weren’t being met by existing products. This insight led to the development of a new product that became a best-seller.

This innovative approach demonstrates how effective search isn’t just about connecting customers with existing products—it can drive product development by revealing unmet customer needs that might otherwise remain hidden.

The business impact of better search

With Lucidworks’ AI and machine learning capabilities, New Pig has transformed what could have been a messy search experience into a streamlined process that connects customers with the right products quickly. The technology has helped them overcome the inherent language barriers in their specialized industry and adapt to changing customer expectations.

“Some of those troubled terms in our dictionary, we’ve been able to curate the user experience for those. In the past, when we were just using Solr, it was very hard to do that without manipulating the data.” — John McQuade, Director of Software Development, New Pig

For New Pig, better search means not just more conversions today, but a foundation for continued growth and innovation that keeps them at the forefront of their industry in 115 countries worldwide.

---

By implementing the Lucidworks Platform, New Pig has bridged the terminology gap between industry jargon and customer language, enabling their 2,500 industrial absorbent products to be discovered more easily by customers across 115 countries—proving that in specialized B2B markets, understanding search intent is as important as the products themselves.