Combining recommendations, search, and shopping assistant into one smart shopping journey

About the project

Sportisimo is a leading Czech chain of sports equipment and clothing stores with more than 200 brick-and-mortar stores and strong online sales in five European countries. Its e-shop has annual sales of over CZK 2 billion and is one of the leaders in the Czech e-commerce market.

Main challenges

Sportisimo had long used its own recommendation and search systems, which over time failed to keep pace with customer expectations and market opportunities.

The solution became difficult to maintain and lacked the ability to respond effectively to user behavior in real time. The company therefore sought a tool that would not only deliver better business results, but also relieve the team of the burden of manually managing personalization components.

First phase solution

In 2024, Sportisimo conducted extensive A/B testing of three systems and platforms:

• internal solution

• well-known competing tool

• tool Perselio

By early 2025, only the last two platforms had reached the final phase. The test ran for two months in live operation and focused on two key areas: product recommendations and full-text search. The main metrics were conversion rate, engagement, average order value, and technical parameters such as response speed.

Results of the first phase

Perselio's recommendation tools outperformed the competing system by more than two times on average—and by up to four times on some recommendation surfaces.

Perselio's Search achieved comparable results to the competing solution, with approximately 2% higher sales performance. Sportisimo thus confirmed that the combination of Perselio Recommendations & Search delivers high performance and much greater value when the costs of each platform are included in the comparison. Another significant benefit was the reduction in manual system administration.

Sportisimo decided to deploy Perselio across all its markets, including private websites (e.g., Klimatex), and completely replaced both Sportisimo's original proprietary systems and all tested external solutions.

Second phase

Hyper-personalization tools on Sportisimo e-shops have been supplemented with the deployment of Perselio Shopping Assistant– a smart conversational tool that helps customers choose the ideal product based on their preferences, interests, or favorite brands.

AI Engaging Touchpoints have also been incorporated into the structure of the e-shops, shortening the path to a good choice and increasing users' willingness to remain active in communicating with the website or e-shop.

Results of the second phase

Combining recommendations, search, and shopping assistant into one intelligent shopping journey led to an increase in conversion rates and sales, as well as more satisfied customers.

Results:

• +400% better performance (sales, CTR) on recommendation spaces

• 2× higher return on investment compared to internal solutions and competitors

• 15% conversion rate with the deployed AI shopping assistant