Case Study: Sweetwater Sound achieves pinpoint search relevance and higher conversions with HawkSearch

Bringing Music to Life Through Successful Search

Sweetwater Sound, the leading U.S. online retailer for musical instruments and pro audio, faced search challenges as its catalog grew to over 30,000 products across 25,000+ pages. Product complexity and inconsistent terminology meant previous search tools returned irrelevant results, couldn’t limit facets to relevant attributes, and required manual, hard-to-scale synonym management.

Sweetwater implemented Hawksearch for its advanced analyzers, “copy to” multi-analyzer support, boost-and-bury rules, selective facet display, and automated one-way and multi-way synonym integration. The result was far more relevant results (e.g., “red guitar” now returns guitars first), faster, cleaner side navigation, and automated synonym updates — delivering year‑over‑year gains of +13% web visits driven by site search, +20% transactions, and a +5% conversion-rate lift.

Sweetwater Sound

Sam Dickinson

Data Strategy and Analytics Manager