11teamsports Scored a 38.46% AOV Increase With an Assist From Us

The story of 11teamsports kicked off in Crailsheim, Germany, in 2007. The company has become one of the top three largest shops for football and team sports in Europe, with over 1,500,000 customers who shop online or in brick-and-mortar stores in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, or Switzerland. Furthermore, 11teamsports owns related stores, such as Top4Running, Kickz, WePlayVoleyball, and many others.

The company’s mission is to consistently provide access to quality goods and maintain a great shopping experience. With such a large number of customers, it’s only natural that 11teamsports wanted to provide the best online shopping experience to ensure they would stay on top of their game. To do so, 11teamsports had to address a couple of issues with the search performance.

Showing red cards to problems with search

To help 11teamsports reach its goals, they needed to solve a couple of issues with their original search solution. The issues were related to language processing, and 11teamsports websites have versions with languages from throughout Europe, known for their grammar nuances. Therefore, it was even more important for them to ensure that the search could process all these languages and provide the correct results for their customers.

Other problems that needed solving were related to typo correction, synonyms, search intent, autocomplete functionality, and price management. Luigi’s Box sets itself apart from the competition thanks to advanced CEE language processing, which our experts maintain for each language in the area to ensure our Search will always be able to work correctly. We also offer our clients a hands-on approach, allowing us to tweak our solutions to their specific needs.

Issue #1: Non-functioning synonyms

While 11teamsports’s native search solution offered some synonym functionality, it wasn’t good enough to show tangible results. Luigi’s Box offers automated synonym suggestions as well as synonym management features that work flawlessly across multiple languages.

Synonym suggestions in Search offer relevant synonyms for users based on their customers’ previous searches. 11teamsports is able to identify which synonyms to include and provide relevant results. The synonym management feature allows them to easily manage all synonyms and create one-way or two-way synonyms to maintain flexibility and ensure that the search experience will remain flawless.

Issue #2: Lack of typo correction and typo tolerance features

Typos often work as a red card for relevant search results for e-commerce websites, and this was also the case for 11teamsports. A simple typo can ruin the experience completely, and customers will end up with zero search results. Luckily, there are remedies for this. Luigi’s Box Typo Correction and Typo Tolerance features serve as goalkeepers that stop typos from scoring.

Typo correction and typo tolerance will automatically fix the entered search term with the typo and turn it into the correct search term based on the closest match. That way, our Search can provide relevant results even if the customers mistype on their keyboards.

Issue #3: Autocomplete diversification for various phrases

11teamsports wanted to show relevant product results without showing only product options from the same brand every time. For example, if a customer searched for “football shoes,” the search would turn up only football shoe options from one specific brand.

We have solved this problem with our Autocomplete feature, which shows different brand product models so their customers can browse through multiple options even before they hit the search button.

Issue #4: Balancing search intent with search terms

Luigi’s Box Search can provide relevant search results even if the query contains size, color, or other product properties. However, this can create conflicting situations, which we needed to address and tweak the solution to provide relevant results no matter the search intent. A great example of how we solved this is the Nike Pegasus 36 running shoes.

If a customer enters “pegasus 36” in the search box, the customer could be searching for the Nike model called Pegasus 36 or any Nike Pegasus model with shoe size 36 available for purchase. We have solved this problem with a custom-built solution. A search on the 11teamsports website will show both the closest products (Nike Pegasus 36) and Nike Pegasus models available in shoe size 36. We had to balance search intent and search terms to provide relevant matches.

Issue #5: Price management options

11teamsports was looking for an effective way to show prices in search results. However, the prices had to be dynamic and able to change accordingly. Luigi’s Box solved this and provided 11teamsports with the ability to show both regular and discounted prices in autocomplete. Furthermore, the prices change depending on whether the customer is logged in or out, and different prices are shown for club members.

Passing the ball to Luigi’s Box brought tangible results

11teamsports selected Luigi’s Box from three different solutions, and it was first launched on one of the company’s websites, Top4Running. After getting strong initial results, Luigi’s Box was also launched on the Top4Sport and Top4Fitness sites. Further positive results convinced the company to launch Luigi’s Box on the 11teamsports website at a later date.

Results after the initial launch on the Slovak Top4Running website