10 Reasons to Replace Endeca for a Superior Ecommerce Search Experience

Once a leader in ecommerce search, Endeca has lagged in innovation in recent years. Without the integration of modern AI and search capabilities, it fails to meet the ever-evolving expectations of today’s customers.

Now that Endeca reached its End of Life (EOL), it’s time for your organization to evaluate possible Endeca replacement options to get the most value out of search. Based on dozens of Endeca replacement projects, we’ve put together a checklist of considerations. Here are 10 reasons why Lucidworks will give you a clear advantage in commerce search.

1. Convert Browsers into Buyers with AI-Powered Personalization

AI-powered personalization is essential. Endeca, built in a pre-AI era, does not match the capabilities of modern solutions. Customers don’t expect to learn how to use your site; they expect it to learn how to best serve them. Lucidworks leverage customer signals and AI-powered search to determine intent and recommend products and content that meet your customers wants while driving acquisition and conversion in return.

91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands offering relevant recommendations, and 90% favor brands that personalize the experience.

Benefits: Increased engagement, improved customer experience, stronger brand perception, higher conversions, and boosted customer acquisition.

“We’ve seen dramatic bumps in conversion rates and, overall, some of those key success metrics for transactional revenue within an order of magnitude of a 50% increase since the migration.”

– Marc Desormeau, Senior Manager, Digital Customer Experience, Lenovo

2. Capture Customer’s Attention with Conversational Search

More than ever, customers today expect search to understand them in their natural language, like using their favorite voice assistant. This is in contrast to searching with exact keywords. Lucidworks uses natural language processing and conversational AI to understand how people naturally speak. This eliminates the frustrations of keyword searching and manual adjustments required in Endeca.

Here’s how it works:

• ML-based query rewriting, synonym learning, and vector search all help deliver relevant results at scale without the need for any manual synonyms, redirects, stop words, required in platforms like Endeca.
• Using knowledge graphs and signals, Lucidworks takes this a step further to support adaptation and personalization of relevant results based on context and behavior.

3. Uncover True Customer Intent with Head-n-Tail Analysis

Customers don’t always search the way your product catalog is organized. Head-n-Tail Analysis, an AI-powered technique, deciphers what customers really mean. How? It uses AI to automatically fix search keywords based on misspellings, word order, synonyms and other types of common mismatches — something Endeca was never able to do. This saves an enormous amount of time for search teams.

4. Supercharge Search with Domain-Specific Knowledge Graphs

Knowledge graphs elevate search far beyond simple keyword matching, mirroring the way humans think about products and relationships. This technology — the secret behind Google and Amazon — dramatically improves query understanding and result accuracy.

Smarter Insights: Lucidworks’ knowledge graphs incorporate AI, ontological learning, and internal/external data to enrich your product information and refine search results.

Customer-Centric Search: Results align with how shoppers actually use products, not just rigid product attributes. This boosts SEO and customer satisfaction.

5. Avoid Null Results with Neural Hybrid Search™

Endeca’s traditional lexical search is easily stumped by misspellings, unusual phrasing, or gaps in your product data. This leads to “no results” pages and irrelevant suggestions – frustrating for customers.

Neural Hybrid Search™, combines traditional lexical search with semantic vector search to dramatically reduce ‘no result’ situations and reducing bounce. Semantic vector search has shown to eliminate more than 90% of no result searches while increasing conversion of those queries by 34%.

6. Bridge Data Science Silos

Endeca’s rigid structure limits the power of your data science models. Lucidworks, on the other hand, offers flexibility and customization:

Built-in Toolkit: Access a library of standard models to quickly enhance your search results.

Use Any Model: Seamlessly integrate your custom data science, machine learning, or generative AI models for truly unique, tailored search experiences.

This flexibility empowers organizations that have invested in their own data science capabilities.

7. Improve Predictions with KPI-Based AI

Endeca’s reliance on manual rules creates unnecessary work and limits flexibility.  Lucidworks’ AI-powered search analyzes real-time data and your business goals (KPIs) to predict the best results. Here’s how:

Reduced Maintenance: AI learns from customer behavior, minimizing the need for constant rule adjustments.

Strategic Merchandising: Use rules strategically to highlight seasonal items or trends, while AI handles the day-to-day optimization.

8. Make Better Business Decisions with Actionable Analytics

Understanding how your search strategy impacts your bottom line is crucial for informed decision-making. Oracle’s discontinuation of Endeca analytics left a void. Lucidworks fills that gap with powerful analytics.

Here’s how Lucidworks Analytics works:

Pre-Built and Custom Reports: Access a library of essential reports, and easily design your own, including KPI-driven analysis of revenue, conversion, and A/B testing.

Integrate with Your BI Tools: Seamlessly connect Lucidworks Analytics with your existing business intelligence systems for a holistic view of your data.

9. Increase Search Performance with Faster Indexing and Real-Time Updates

You can’t sell what you can’t serve. Faster indexing lets you be more agile in your merchandising strategy and execution. Businesses with a volatile catalog, inventory, and pricing cannot afford to have stale results. You need to respond to market trends and customer demand with near real-time search updates, something Endeca couldn’t match. Further, make ancillary business data from ERP and supply chain systems readily available to drive search results and recommendations.

10. Reduce Deployment, Maintenance, and Infrastructure Costs

Endeca’s limited connectors lead to costly custom integrations and ongoing maintenance headaches. Lucidworks was designed for efficiency and flexibility:

Effortless Integrations: Over 40 built-in connectors to common data sources eliminate the need for bespoke integrations, saving time and money.

Expansive Content Support: Index over 1400 media types, unlocking a wealth of data to enhance search results, boost SEO, and drive conversions.

Open and Extensible: Lucidworks’ open platform allows for seamless integration with cutting-edge technologies, future-proofing your investment.

Learn More

• Want similar success? Read our case study and see how an activewear brand achieved a 30% boost in click-to-cart rates.
• Get in touch, we’re happy to help!