ENTR
Product SenseSenior≈ 30 min

Kova — Search Redesign

Search-to-action conversion dropped from 8.4% to 5.1% after the redesign shipped — roughly $180K/week in lost revenue.

The scenario

Kova is a B2C marketplace. The search team shipped a major redesign 4 weeks ago — new results layout, updated filters, and a new autocomplete. Overall search volume is unchanged but the share of searches that end in a purchase or add-to-cart has dropped 3.3 points.

Constraint

You cannot roll back — the new search infrastructure is live and the old stack is deprecated.

Your task

Diagnose what went wrong in the redesign and propose a targeted fix without a full rollback.

1. Clarify: What do you need to know before diagnosing?

Pick the 3 questions you'd ask first.

Model approach (strong picks)

  • Strong pick
    Did the drop happen immediately at launch, or gradually over the 4 weeks?
  • Strong pick
    Which part of the redesign changed most — the results layout, filters, or autocomplete?
  • Strong pick
    Is the conversion drop uniform across all query types and devices, or concentrated somewhere?

2. Hypothesize: What are the most likely causes of the conversion drop?

Pick the 3 hypotheses you'd investigate first.

Model approach (strong picks)

  • Strong pick
    The new results layout buries the buy/add-to-cart CTA — users see results but can't act easily.
  • Strong pick
    The new filter UX is harder to use — users can't narrow results to what they want, so they abandon.
  • Strong pick
    Autocomplete is surfacing less relevant suggestions, leading to poor-quality result sets.

3. Investigate: What do you do in the next 48 hours?

Pick the 3 highest-leverage moves.

Model approach (strong picks)

  • Strong pick
    Build a click-map on the results page — find where users click (or don't) after a search.
  • Strong pick
    Funnel analysis: search → result click → product page → add-to-cart — find where the drop-off is sharpest.
  • Strong pick
    Segment conversion by device (mobile vs desktop) and query type (navigational vs exploratory).

4. Propose: What's your targeted fix?

Pick the one intervention you'd ship first.

Model approach (strong picks)

  • Strong pick
    Redesign the results card to make the CTA (add-to-cart / buy) more prominent — move it above the fold on mobile.
  • Strong pick
    Ship a simplified filter panel that restores the top 5 most-used filters from the old design as persistent chips.

Related questions

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