Case Study: Acuity Brands achieves a search-first growth engine and 42% higher click-throughs with Coveo

How a search-first approach transformed a complex catalog website into a growth engine in just five months

Acuity Brands, a North American leader in industrial lighting with over 13,000 employees and a catalog of roughly 5,000 products across 32 brands, faced a fragmented, outdated website where customers and specifiers couldn’t reliably find products or content. With multiple brand sites, poor search, hidden content, and no analytics for content gaps, the company made a site redesign a top strategic priority to better support diverse users (agents, distributors, contractors, architects) and drive growth.

A search-first rebuild using Sitecore and Coveo created a single index and codebase, AI-powered faceted search, and a cloud admin console so content teams can optimize experiences without developers; the new site launched in five months and returns results in under three seconds. Outcomes include a 42% lift in click-throughs after six months (12% after one month on a later release), a drop in zero-result queries from 15% to under 4%, and a 40% recovery of missed queries through Cross‑Brand and Double‑Zero search initiatives, enabling continuous, data-driven improvement.

Acuity Brands

Andrew Crowder

VP of Enterprise Architecture