- 200–400 ms response time
- ~12% hit rate on B2B queries
- Manual maintenance required
- Black-box ranking
- 47 ms response time
- 90%+ result match
- Self-learning from conversion
- Explainable per result
Not every shop needs AI search. We give you an honest decision aid, even when the answer sometimes means: stay with your standard search.
When standard search is enough
Standard shop searches (Shopware-native, simple Elasticsearch setups) are not bad tools. They are enough if:
- Your assortment has fewer than 5,000 products
- Products have simple, linguistically clear names
- There are no industry synonyms or norm codes
- Search is not conversion-critical (e.g. most customers buy via category navigation)
- You don’t have an internal search team and don’t want to build one
If that fits you: stay with the standard search. AI search would not deliver measurable ROI, only cost and complexity.
When AI search is the better match
AI-based search (semantic search, embeddings, re-ranking) is worth it when:
- Your assortment covers 10,000 to 500,000 products
- You have technical attributes, norms, material codes or variants
- Search is a daily conversion driver (search share above 25%)
- You have GDPR requirements that get tricky with US cloud vendors
- You want control instead of black box
- You want a fast setup (days, not weeks)
Three hard comparison points
1. Response time
Standard searches often sit at 200–400 ms. AI searches can be at 47–80 ms when the index setup is right. Every 100 ms delay costs 1–3% conversion.
2. Result quality on complex queries
With a standard search and a query like “stainless steel m12 cap nut set 50pcs”, the hit probability is around 12–18% (all four filters must be maintained explicitly as attributes). With AI search: 90%+.
3. Maintenance effort
Standard search requires manual synonym maintenance, boost rules and re-ranking adjustments for every new category. AI search learns this automatically from conversion signals, which reduces maintenance effort by 60–80%.
The honest ROI calculation
In mid-market manufacturing and wholesale shops, we see for comparable setups:
- Eywora license: ~€4,800–20,000 per year (depending on assortment tier)
- Implementation: 0€ internal hours with direct setup (24h standard) or a few days of agency time for custom integration
- Additional revenue per year: typically €200,000 to €5,000,000, depending on daily revenue
- Payback: under 14 days for most setups
If you want it exact for your shop: the ROI calculator gives a first estimate, the fit check delivers a defensible number for your shop.
What’s not in the pitch-deck logic
A point we emphasize with customers more often than we sell it: AI search is not autopilot. For it to work, you need:
- Assortment data that is at least minimally maintained (Health Score surfaces this)
- A clear idea of what search should achieve (optimize margins? avoid out-of-stock? cross-sell?)
- Willingness to tune ranking logic in the first week, not just observe
Whoever brings that benefits immediately. Whoever is just looking for a magic tool that solves everything alone will be disappointed, with AI too.
