HawkSearch
Completely Redesign Elevating UX and Introducing Advanced AI-Powered Features
- HawkSearch
- Product Design
Context
From an outdated platform to an AI-powered eCommerce experience
After being acquired by Bridgeline, HawkSearch entered a new phase of growth. HawkSearch entered a new phase of growth. While the product was powerful, the platform felt outdated and no longer met enterprise expectations, creating an opportunity to redesign the experience and introduce AI-driven capabilities to improve product discovery, merchandising, and scalability.
Problems
A powerful platform struggling to scale with complexity
While HawkSearch had strong capabilities, the experience and positioning did not reflect its full potential.
Outdated and fragmented experience
The dashboard and website felt outdated and lacked a cohesive structure, making navigation harder and reducing trust in enterprise sales and onboarding moments.
Complex workflows with high manual effort
Managing large, attribute-rich catalogs required significant manual work and expertise, slowing down teams and limiting scalability.
AI lacked a clear product role
AI was emerging as an opportunity, but it wasn’t yet defined within the product experience, making its value unclear for both users and stakeholders.
Limited differentiation in the market
The product was powerful but did not clearly stand out from competitors, making it harder to communicate its value to enterprise clients.
Challenge
How might we simplify a complex B2B search and merchandising platform while leveraging AI to improve product findability and decision-making at scale?
Approach
Redesigning the foundation while introducing AI as a core experience
The work started with a complete redesign of the product dashboard and marketing website, improving usability, structure, and visual credibility. In parallel, I explored how AI could enhance product discovery and merchandising workflows. Through concept development and prototyping, I helped define how AI could turn complex catalog data into more intuitive, actionable experiences for users.
Website redesign
Aligned the marketing experience with the product vision, clearly communicating value, innovation, and enterprise readiness.
Platform redesign
Reimagined the dashboard with clearer hierarchy, improved navigation, and a more scalable structure aligned with user workflows.
AI-powered features
Designed a suite of AI capabilities including Smart Search, Smart Responses, and AI Assistants, bringing intelligence directly into user workflows.
AI-driven experience
Introduced AI assistants to simplify complex tasks and make advanced capabilities more accessible to users.
Search Assistant
Introduced a chat-like experience embedded in the search journey, allowing users to move beyond keywords and interact with the platform more naturally.
This enabled more intuitive product discovery, helping customers find the right results faster while improving engagement across complex catalogs.
Merchandising Assistant
Designed to support ecommerce teams in managing and optimizing large product catalogs through conversational inputs.
By simplifying complex merchandising tasks, the assistant reduced operational effort while enabling faster, more data-driven decisions focused on performance and growth.
Analytics Assistant
Enabled teams to explore large volumes of search, click, and conversion data through simple prompts.
The assistant helped translate complex performance data into clear insights, allowing teams to quickly identify opportunities and optimize their strategies.
Smart Search in Action
Instant Engage
Connect with your shoppers before they even start typing
Concept Search
Type in any concept and get answers immediately
Visual Search
Upload an image or take a picture to find the right result
Image Search
Describe an image to find the right result
Answer Questions
Custom responses powered by your content
Conversational Search
Turn queries into quality conversations
Design principles
The design approach focused on ensuring that innovation did not come at the cost of usability, balancing advanced capabilities with clarity and structure.
1. Modernize with purpose
Every visual and UX improvement reinforces credibility and usability.
2. Differentiate through experience
Go beyond features, create a product that feels meaningfully better.
3. Make AI tangible
Turn abstract AI into clear, actionable interactions.
4. Design around workflows
Structure the product based on how users think and work.
5. Build for evolution
Create a foundation that supports continuous innovation.
Impact
From product redesign to market recognition
The redesign and introduction of AI-powered features repositioned HawkSearch as a more competitive and future-ready product in the enterprise ecommerce space. This transformation contributed to a 17% revenue growth and expanded HawkSearch to 63% of total subscription revenue, while also supporting $3.9M in quarterly revenue by the end of 2025.
The successful adoption of AI capabilities by clients strengthened upsell opportunities and reinforced the product’s value, ultimately leading to recognition by Gartner and elevating HawkSearch’s credibility in the market.
