Carved Culture introduced a custom-built search engine for its online store. The project began with a simple question: why wasn't the existing search bar helping customers find the products they wanted?
The Call That Changed Our Search
A software company contacted founder Ryan Bomzer after testing the store's search bar. Its representative pointed out that relevant products were being missed because the search experience relied heavily on words in product titles rather than the fuller information in product descriptions.
The company offered a one-month trial of a more advanced search tool, with features for matching descriptive terms, colours and materials. The trial generated additional sales, but its greater value was showing how much easier product discovery could be—and providing search analytics that revealed what customers were looking for.
Finding the Right Balance
The challenge was cost. The additional sales did not cover the software subscription, and many of its features went unused. Ryan explored lower-cost alternatives, but each came with compromises.
One replacement provided much of what the store needed, yet lacked the control to adjust how products were ranked. Missing synonyms and limited tolerance for spelling mistakes also meant shoppers could still miss relevant products.
Building Our Own Solution
Rather than continue relying on software that did not fully meet the store's needs, Ryan set aside a week from his usual work to research search-engine technology and build a first version.
Development involved repeated testing and fixes. The resulting system combines product-description matching, weighted relevance scoring, manual boosts, bestseller signals, synonyms and typo correction. It also draws on Shopify's real-time predictive search and insights from two years of search analytics.
A Better Way to Find Instruments
The goal was not simply to replace a paid app, but to help customers discover the right instruments and learning resources, even when using alternative names or imperfect spelling. By developing our own search engine, we eliminated a third-party subscription, saving an estimated £150.26 annually, while gaining the flexibility to continuously improve search based on customer needs.