They search by part number, shop-floor nickname, or a half-remembered description, and more and more of them ask an AI tool before they ever visit your site.
An ecommerce site can no longer be a digital shelf with a search bar. It has to help buyers find, compare, and reorder with less effort.
That was the clearest theme from the ecommerce blueprint expert sessions we took part in with rB2 and Prepr CMS during 2026. This blog is the short version. You can find the full version of the blueprint right here (in Dutch).
But first: Take a look at some of the pics from the sessions 👇
Your buyers aren’t typing your official product names. They’re typing the shop-floor slang, the abbreviations, and the name the part had back in 2009. Picture a buyer typing “SS bolt M8 DIN 933” while your catalog says “Stainless steel bolt, 40mm, ISO standard, pack of 100.” The same product, but it turns up with zero matches.
Keyword search can’t connect the dots, but search that understands synonyms, intent, and past behavior can. And in B2B, most buyers who hit “no results” don’t try again. They click over to a competitor. One failed search can be one lost order.
Nobody should be rebuilding the same cart every week. Put the predictable stuff on autopilot, like reorder suggestions, low-stock alerts, and smart recommendations. But when an order is business-critical or has compliance riding on it, keep a person in the driver’s seat to give the final '👍'.
Your support team already knows which products confuse buyers and which accessories keep getting left off the order. Feed that straight back into search, product pages, and recommendations, so the same question doesn’t come up twice.
Start small. Pick one category, one customer segment, and one repeat-purchase flow.
Dig into what people are searching for, which searches come up empty, where they bail, and what keeps landing on support’s desk. Then build from there: synonyms first, then product relationships, behavioral data, and finally personalization.
All these findings were presented at the big Shopping Today event, and we were there! Look through some pics from the day: