How Cooklist brought their catalog to life in unexpected ways

Imagine you're in a vast library. Each book, a bundle of information, awaits your perusal. But there's a catch: to find a book, you must know its title. Frustrating, right? This is the world of keyword-based search—a world where precision often trumps intuition.

Enter the age of intent-driven search, a world where your favorite sites understand not just what you type, but what you mean. In this space, searching becomes a dialogue, a question met with understanding, not just results.

Vantage Discovery enables apps to find your meaning, your intent, your context, not just keywords. It's the difference between being heard and being understood. And in a digital world where understanding can be scarce, it's a game-changer.

This was the experience of one of our early innovator customers, Cooklist, a free app to build a meal plan, order your groceries and find recipes to cook with the ingredients you have. When the Cooklist team uploaded their catalog to Vantage, the benefits showed up immediately.

"Vantage takes in the broader context of query, which feels almost human... searches like 'recipes for a 6 year old's birthday party' just weren't possible before." — Brandon Warman, Co-founder & COO, Cooklist

As the graphic below shows, this statement is not hyperbole. Because none of the descriptions in Cooklist’s vast catalog had enough of a match with the long natural-language query, their algorithm is not able to provide any results. But thanks to embeddings with Cooklist’s preferred LLM, OpenAI, and the Vantage Discovery approach to indexing and optimizing search, Cooklist is able to generate dozens of highly relevant results once that exact same catalog is accessed through the simple Vantage Discovery API.

What’s more, Cooklist is able to leverage out of the box discovery functionality from the Vantage platform to help their users find even more relevant results, either through traditional filter categories or through purely semantic connections.

But what does this mean for the wider industry? Imagine providing your customers not just a product they asked for but an experience they'll value. That's what Vantage Discovery helps you deliver.

Reframing the book analogy: Imagine walking into a bookstore, but instead of the books being sorted by genre and author, they're organized by the topics you care about, the insights you need in your life, the ideas that you want to explore further. This isn't your standard “customers who bought this also bought that” approach. We're talking about a discovery experience that's more akin to a knowledgeable friend who not only knows your taste but also the rich history and context behind each recommendation.

We encourage you to try it today. The Vantage Discovery console is easy to use. Simply upload your data, select the LLM you want to use to semantically embed your data, and start delivering outstanding results to your customers via the Vantage search API. Then leverage Vantage Discovery and the power of AI to innovate on customer experiences that drive your business results.

We're a show - not tell company so if you’re interested in learning more about what we’re building or want to better understand how Vantage Discovery can work for your company, you can: 

• View our demo ecommerce store - here you can try our features including semantic search, Vantage Vibe™, Smart Shopper™
• Talk to an engineer to learn more about how we can help you
• Reach out at hello@vantagediscovery.com with any questions. We’d love to connect!