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• 10 Customer Segments Examples and Their Benefits

  9 mai 2024, par Erin

  Now that companies can segment buyers, the days of mass marketing are behind us. Customer segmentation offers various benefits for marketing, content creation, sales, analytics teams and more. Without customer segmentation, your personalised marketing efforts may fall flat. 

  According to the Twilio 2023 state of personalisation report, 69% of business leaders have increased their investment in personalisation. There’s a key reason for this — customer retention and loyalty directly benefit from personalisation. In fact, 62% of businesses have cited improved customer retention due to personalisation efforts. The numbers don’t lie. 

  Keep reading to learn how customer segments can help you fine-tune your personalised marketing campaigns. This article will give you a better understanding of customer segmentation and real-world customer segment examples. You’ll leave with the knowledge to empower your marketing strategies with effective customer segmentation. 

  What are customer segments ?

  Customer segments are distinct groups of people or organisations with similar characteristics, needs and behaviours. Like different species of plants in a garden, each customer segment has specific needs and care requirements. Customer segments are useful for tailoring personalised marketing campaigns for specific groups.

  Personalised marketing has been shown to have significant benefits — with 56% of consumers saying that a personalised experience would make them become repeat buyers. 

  Successful marketing teams typically focus on these types of customer segmentation :

  

  1. Geographic segmentation : groups buyers based on their physical location — country, city, region or climate — and language.
  2. Purchase history segmentation : categorises buyers based on their purchasing habits — how often they make purchases — and allows brands to distinguish between frequent, occasional and one-time buyers. 
  3. Product-based segmentation : groups buyers according to the products they prefer or end up purchasing. 
  4. Customer lifecycle segmentation : segments buyers based on where they are in the customer journey. Examples include new, repeat and lapsed buyers. This segmentation category is also useful for understanding the behaviour of loyal buyers and those at risk of churning. 
  5. Technographic segmentation : focuses on buyers’ technology preferences, including device type, browser type, and operating system. 
  6. Channel preference segmentation : helps us understand why buyers prefer to purchase via specific channels — whether online channels, physical stores or a combination of both. 
  7. Value-based segmentation : categorises buyers based on their average purchase value and sensitivity to pricing, for example. This type of segmentation can provide insights into the behaviours of price-conscious buyers and those willing to pay premium prices. 

  Customer segmentation vs. market segmentation

  Customer segmentation and market segmentation are related concepts, but they refer to different aspects of the segmentation process in marketing. 

  Market segmentation is the broader process of dividing the overall market into homogeneous groups. Market segmentation helps marketers identify different groups based on their characteristics or needs. These market segments make it easier for businesses to connect with new buyers by offering relevant products or new features. 

  On the other hand, customer segmentation is used to help you dig deep into the behaviour and preferences of your current customer base. Marketers use customer segmentation insights to create buyer personas. Buyer personas are essential for ensuring your personalised marketing efforts are relevant to the target audience. 

  10 customer segments examples

  Now that you better understand different customer segmentation categories, we’ll provide real-world examples of how customer segmentation can be applied. You’ll be able to draw a direct connection between the segmentation category or categories each example falls under.

  One thing to note is that you’ll want to consider privacy and compliance when you are considering collecting and analysing types of data such as gender, age, income level, profession or personal interests. Instead, you can focus on these privacy-friendly, ethical customer segmentation types :

  1. Geographic location (category : geographic segmentation)

  The North Face is an outdoor apparel and equipment company that relies on geographic segmentation to tailor its products toward buyers in specific regions and climates. 

  For instance, they’ll send targeted advertisements for insulated jackets and snow gear to buyers in colder climates. For folks in seasonal climates, The North Face may send personalised ads for snow gear in winter and ads for hiking or swimming gear in summer. 

  The North Face could also use geographic segmentation to determine buyers’ needs based on location. They can use this information to send targeted ads to specific customer segments during peak ski months to maximise profits.

  2. Preferred language (category : geographic segmentation)

  Your marketing approach will likely differ based on where your customers are and the language they speak. So, with that in mind, language may be another crucial variable you can introduce when identifying your target customers. 

  Language-based segmentation becomes even more important when one of your main business objectives is to expand into new markets and target international customers — especially now that global reach is made possible through digital channels. 

  Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” is a multi-national campaign with personalised cans and bottles featuring popular names from countries around the globe. It’s just one example of targeting customers based on language.

  3. Repeat users and loyal customers (category : customer lifecycle segmentation)

  Sephora, a large beauty supply company, is well-known for its Beauty Insider loyalty program. 

  It segments customers based on their purchase history and preferences and rewards their loyalty with gifts, discounts, exclusive offers and free samples. And since customers receive personalised product recommendations and other perks, it incentivises them to remain members of the Beauty Insider program — adding a boost to customer loyalty.

  By creating a memorable customer experience for this segment of their customer base, staying on top of beauty trends and listening to feedback, Sephora is able to keep buyers coming back.

  

  4. New customers (category : customer lifecycle segmentation)

  Subscription services use customer lifecycle segmentation to offer special promotions and trials for new customers. 

  HBO Max is a great example of a real company that excels at this strategy : 

  They offer 40% savings on an annual ad-free plan, which targets new customers who may be apprehensive about the added monthly cost of a recurring subscription.

  This marketing strategy prioritises fostering long-term customer relationships with new buyers to avoid high churn rates. 

  5. Cart abandonment (category : purchase history segmentation)

  With a rate of 85% among US-based mobile users, cart abandonment is a huge issue for ecommerce businesses. One way to deal with this is to segment inactive customers and cart abandoners — those who showed interest by adding products to their cart but haven’t converted yet — and send targeted emails to remind them about their abandoned carts.

  E-commerce companies like Ipsy, for example, track users who have added items to their cart but haven’t followed through on the purchase. The company’s messaging often contains incentives — like free shipping or a limited-time discount — to encourage passive users to return to their carts. 

  Research has found that cart abandonment emails with a coupon code have a high 44.37% average open rate. 

  6. Website activity (category : technographic segmentation)

  It’s also possible to segment customers based on website activity. Now, keep in mind that this is a relatively broad approach ; it covers every interaction that may occur while the customer is browsing your website. As such, it leaves room for many different types of segmentation. 

  For instance, you can segment your audience based on the pages they visited, the elements they interacted with — like CTAs and forms — how long they stayed on each page and whether they added products to their cart. 

  Matomo’s Event Tracking can provide additional context to each website visit and tell you more about the specific interactions that occur, making it particularly useful for segmenting customers based on how they spend their time on your website. 

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  Amazon segments its customers based on browsing behaviour — recently viewed products and categories, among other things — which, in turn, allows them to improve the customer’s experience and drive sales.

  7. Traffic source (category : channel segmentation) 

  You can also segment your audience based on traffic sources. For example, you can determine if your website visitors arrived through Google and other search engines, email newsletters, social media platforms or referrals. 

  In other words, you’ll create specific audience segments based on the original source. Matomo’s Acquisition feature can provide insights into five different types of traffic sources — search engines, social media, external websites, direct traffic and campaigns — to help you understand how users enter your website.

  You may find that most visitors arrive at your website through social media ads or predominantly discover your brand through search engines. Either way, by learning where they’re coming from, you’ll be able to determine which conversion paths you should prioritise and optimise further. 

  8. Device type (category : technographic segmentation)

  Device type is customer segmentation based on the devices that potential customers may use to access your website and view your content. 

  It’s worth noting that, on a global level, most people (96%) use mobile devices — primarily smartphones — for internet access. So, there’s a high chance that most of your website visitors are coming from mobile devices, too. 

  However, it’s best not to assume anything. Matomo can detect the operating system and the type of device — desktop, mobile device, tablet, console or TV, for example. 

  By introducing the device type variable into your customer segmentation efforts, you’ll be able to determine if there’s a preference for mobile or desktop devices. In return, you’ll have a better idea of how to optimise your website — and whether you should consider developing an app to meet the needs of mobile users.

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  9. Browser type (category : technographic segmentation)

  Besides devices, another type of segmentation that belongs to the technographic category and can provide valuable insights is browser-related. In this case, you’re tracking the internet browser your customers use. 

  Many browser types are available — including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Firefox and Brave — and each may display your website and other content differently. 

  So, keeping track of your customers’ preferred choices is important. Otherwise, you won’t be able to fully understand their online experience — or ensure that these browsers are displaying your content properly. 

  

  10. Ecommerce activity (category : purchase history, value based, channel or product based segmentation) 

  Similar to website activity, looking at ecommerce activity can tell your sales teams more about which pages the customer has seen and how they have interacted with them. 

  With Matomo’s Ecommerce Tracking, you’ll be able to keep an eye on customers’ on-site behaviours, conversion rates, cart abandonment, purchased products and transaction data — including total revenue and average order value.

  Considering that the focus is on sales channels — such as your online store — this approach to customer segmentation can help you improve the sales experience and increase profitability. 

  Start implementing these customer segments examples

  With ever-evolving demographics and rapid technological advancements, customer segmentation is increasingly complex. The tips and real-world examples in this article break down and simplify customer segmentation so that you can adapt to your customer base. 

  Customer segmentation lays the groundwork for your personalised marketing campaigns to take off. By understanding your users better, you can effectively tailor each campaign to different segments. 

  If you’re ready to see how Matomo can elevate your personalised marketing campaigns, try it for free for 21 days. No credit card required.

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• Homepage Design : Best Practices & Examples

  5 octobre 2022, par Erin

  Did you know users spend about 50 milliseconds deciding if they like your website’s homepage design or not ?

  With billions of websites and scrolling often done on the go, you have to make a strong first impression because the chances for a once-over are slim. 

  Learn how to design magnetically-appealing website homepages from this guide. 

  What is a homepage in web design ?

  Homepage is the front page of your website — a destination where users land when typing your website URL address. It’s located at the root of the website’s domain (e.g., matomo.org) or a subdomain (e.g., university.webflow.com).

  Design-wise a homepage has two goals :

  • Explain the purpose of the website and present overview information 
  • Provide top-level navigation to lower-level web pages (e.g., blog, sales pages, etc.) 

  Separately, a homepage is also the place where users will return each time they’ll feel stuck and want to start anew. Thus, your homepage website design should provide obvious navigation paths to other website areas.

  6 Must-Know Website Homepage Design Best Practices

  Behind every winning homepage design stands a detailed customer journey map. 

  A customer journey is a schematic representation of how site visitors will move around your website to accomplish various goals. 

  A good customer journey map lists different actions a user will take after landing on your website (e.g., browse product pages, save items to a wishlist, register an account, etc.) — and it does so for different audience segments. 

  

  Your homepage design should help users move from the first step on their journey (e.g., learning about your website) to the final one (e.g., converting to a paid customer). At the same time, your homepage should serve the needs of both new and returning visitors — prospects who may be at a different stage of their journey (e.g., consideration). 

  With the above in mind, let’s take a look at several website homepage design ideas and the reasons why they work. 

  1. Use Familiar Design Elements

  Whether you’re designing a new website or refreshing an old one, it’s always tempting to go “out of the box” — use horizontal scrolling, skip header navigation or include arty animations. 

  Bold design choices work for some brands, mainly those who aren’t using their website as a primary sales channel (e.g., luxury brands). 

  But unfamiliar design patterns can also intimidate a lot of shoppers. In one observational study, people were asked to guess where specific content (e.g., information on international calls) would be placed on a telecom website. 75% of users picked the same location. This means two things :

  • People already have expectations of where specific website information is typically placed 
  • Yet, one in four users struggles to identify the right areas even within standard website layouts

  So why make the job harder for them ? As UX consultant Peter Ramsey rightfully notes : 

  The truth is : designing the best experience isn’t about being unique, it’s about being easy. And guess what feels really easy to use ? Things that feel familiar.

  Therefore, analyse other homepage layout designs in your industry. Pay attention to the number and type of homepage screens and approaches to designing header/footer navigation. 

  Take some of those ideas as your “base”. Then make your homepage design on-brand with unique typography, icons, visuals and other graphic design elements.

  Take a cue from ICAM — a steel manufacturing company. Their niche isn’t typically exciting. Yet, their homepage design stops you in your tracks and tinkers your curiosity to discover more (even if you aren’t shopping for metalware). 

  

  The interesting part is that ICAM uses a rather standard homepage layout. You have a hero image in the first screen, followed by a multi-column layout of their industry expertise and an overview of manufacturers. 

  But this homepage design feels fresh because the company uses plenty of white space, bold typography and vibrant visuals. Also, they delay the creative twist (horizontal scrolling area) to the bottom of the homepage, meaning that it’s less likely to intimidate less confident web users. 

  2. Decide On The Optimal Homepage Layout 

  In web design, a homepage layout is your approach to visually organising different information on the screen. 

  Observant folks will notice that good homepage designs often have the same layout. For example, include a split-view “hero” screen with a call to action on the left and visuals (photo or video) on the left. 

  

  The reason for using similar layouts for website homepage design isn’t a lack of creativity. On the contrary, some layouts have become the “best practice” because they :

  • Offer a great user experience (UX) and don’t confuse first-time visitors 
  • Feel familiar and create a pleasurable sense of deja-vu among users 
  • Have proven to drive higher conversion rates through benchmarks and tests 

  Popular types of website homepage layouts : 

  • Single column – a classic option of presenting main content in a single, vertical column. Good choice for blogs, personal websites and simple corporate sites. 
  • Split screen layout divides the page in two equal areas with different information present. Works best for Ecommerce homepages (e.g., to separate different types of garments) or SaaS websites, offering two product types (e.g., a free personal product version and a business edition). 
  • Asymmetrical layout assumes dividing your homepage into areas of different size and styles. Asymmetry helps create specific focal points for users to draw their attention to the most prominent information. 
  • Grid of cards layout helps present a lot of information in a more digestible manner by breaking down bigger bulks of text into smaller cards — a graphic element, featuring an image and some texts. By tapping a card, users can then access extra content. 
  • Boxes are visually similar to cards, but can be of varying shape. For example, you can have a bigger header-width box area, followed by four smaller boxes within it. Both of these website layouts work well for Ecommerce. 
  • Featured image layout gives visuals (photos and videos) the most prominent placement on the homepage, with texts and other graphic design elements serving a secondary purpose. 
  • F-pattern layout is based on the standard eye movement most people have when reading content on the website. Eye tracking studies found that we usually pay the most attention to information atop of the page (header area), then scan horizontally before dripping down to the next vertical line until we find content that captures our attention. 

  User behaviour analytics (UBA) tools are the best way to determine what type of layout will work for your homepage. 

  For example, you can use Matomo Heatmaps and Session Recording to observe how users navigate your homepage, which areas or links they click and what blockers they face during navigation.

  

  Matomo can capture accurate behavioural insights because we track relative positions to elements within your websites. This approach allows us to provide accurate data for users with different browsers, operating systems, zoom-in levels and fonts. 

  The best part ? You can collect behavioural data from up to 100 different user segments to understand how different audience cohorts engage with your product.

  3. Include a One-Sentence Tagline

  A tagline is a one-line summary of what your company does and what its unique sales proposition (USP) is. It should be short, catchy and distinguish you from competitors.

  A modern homepage design practice is to include a call to action in the first screen. Why ? Because you then instantly communicate or remind of your value proposition to every user — and provide them with an easy way to convert whenever they are ready to do business with you. 

  Here’s how three companies with a similar product, a project management app, differentiate themselves through homepage taglines. 

  Monday.com positions itself as an operating system (OS) for work. 

  

  Basecamp emphasises its product simplicity and openly says that they are different from other overly-complex software. 

  

  Asana, in turn, addresses a familiar user pain point (siloed communication) that it attempts to fix with its product. 

  

  Coming up with the perfect homepage tagline is a big task. You may have plenty of ideas, but little confidence in what version will stick. 

  The best approach ? Let a series of A/B tests decide. You can test a roaster of homepage slogans on a rotating bi-weekly/monthly schedule and track how copy changes affect conversion rates. 

  With Matomo A/B test feature, you can create, track and manage all experiments straight from your web analytics app — and get consolidated reports on total page visitors and conversion rates per each tested variation. 

  

  Beyond slogans, you can also run A/B tests to validate submission form placements, button texts or the entire page layout. 

  For instance, you can benchmark how your new homepage design performs compared to the old version with a subset of users before making it publicly available. 

  4. Highlight The Main Tasks For The User

  Though casual browsing is a thing, most of us head to specific websites with a clear agenda — find information, compare prices, obtain services, etc. 

  Thus, your homepage should provide clear starting points for users’ main tasks (those you’ve also identified as conversion goals on your customer journey maps !).

  These tasks can include : 

  • Account registration 
  • Product demo request 
  • Newsletter sign-up 

  The best website homepage designs organically guide users through a set number of common tasks, one screen at a time. 

  Let’s analyse Sable homepage design. The company offers a no-fee bank account and a credit card product for soon-to-be US transplants. The main task a user has : Decide if they want to try Sable and hopefully open an account with them. 

  

  This mono-purpose page focuses on persuading a prospect that Sable is right for them. 

  The first screen hosts the main CTA with an animated drop-down arrow to keep scrolling. This is likely aimed at first-time visitors that just landed on the page from an online ad or social media post. 

  The second screen serves the main pitch — no-fee, no-hassle access to a US banking account that also helps you build your credit score. 

  The third screen encourages users to learn more about Sable Credit — the flagship product. For the sceptics, the fourth screen offers several more reasons to sign up for the credit product. 

  Then Sable moves on to pitching its second offering — a no-fee debit card with a cashback. Once again, the follow-up screen sweetens the deal by bringing up other perks (higher cashback for popular services like Amazon) and overcoming objections (no SSN required and multi-language support available). 

  The sequence ends with side-by-side product comparison and some extra social proof. 

  In Sable’s case, each homepage screen has a clear purpose and is designed to facilitate one specific user action — account opening. 

  For multi-product companies, the above strategy works great for designing individual landing pages. 

  5. Design Proper Navigation Paths

  All websites have two areas reserved for navigation : 

  • Header menu 
  • Footer menu 

  Designing an effective header menu is more important since it’s the primary tool visitors will use to discover other pages. 

  Your header menu can be :

  • Sticky — always visible as the person keeps scrolling. 
  • Static — e.g., a hidden drop-down menu. 

  If you go for a static header and have a longer homepage layout (e.g., 5+ screens), you also need to add extra navigation elements somewhere mid-page. Or else users might not figure out where to go next and merely bounce off. 

  You can do this by : 

  • Promoting other areas of your website (e.g., sub-category pages) by linking out to them 
  • Adding a carousel of “recent posts”, “recommended reads” and “latest products” 
  • Using buttons and CTAs to direct users towards specific actions (e.g., account registration) or assets (free eBook)

  For instance, cosmetics brand Typology doesn’t have a sticky header on the homepage. Instead, they prompt discovery by promoting different product categories (best sellers, bundles, latest arrivals) and their free skin diagnostic quiz — a great engagement mechanism to retain first time users.

  

  Once the user scrolls down to the bottom of the page, they should have an extra set of navigational options — aka footer links. 

  Again, these help steer the visitor towards discovering more content without scrolling back up to the top of your homepage. 

  Nielsen Norman Group says that people mostly use footers as :

  • A second chance to be convinced — after reading the entire homepage, the user is ready to give your product a go.
    
  • The last resort for hard-to-find content that’s not displayed in global header navigation (e.g., Terms and Conditions or shipping information pages).

  As a rule of thumb, you should designate the following information to the footer : 

  • Utility links (Contact page, Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, etc.) 
  • Secondary-task links (e.g., Career page, Investor Details, Media contacts, etc.) 
  • Brands within the organisation (if you operate several) 
  • Customer engagement link (email newsletters and social media buttons)

  The key is to keep the area compact — not more than one standard user screen resolution of 1280×720. 

  6. Show Users What’s Clickable (Or Not) 

  A homepage invites your site visitors on a journey. But if they don’t know which elements to click, they aren’t going to get anywhere.

  Good homepage design makes it obvious which page elements are clickable, i.e., can take the user to a new page or another segment of the homepage. 

  Here are several must-know homepage design tips for better on-page navigation : 

  • Use colour and underline or bold to highlight clickable words. Alternatively, you can change the browser cursor from a standard arrow into another element (e.g., a larger dot or a pointy finger) to indicate when the cursor hovers over a clickable website area. 
  • Make descriptive button texts that imply what will happen when a user clicks the page. Instead of using abstract and generic button texts like “see more” or “learn more”, try a more vibrant language like “dive in” for clicking through to a spa page. 
  • Use a unified hover area to show how different homepage design elements represent a single path or multiple navigation paths. When multiple items are encapsulated in one visual element (e.g., a box), users may be reluctant to click the image because they aren’t sure if it’s one large hit area leading to a single page or if there are multiple hit areas, leading to different pages. 

  Homepage of BEAUSiTE — a whimsical hotel in the Swiss Alps – embodies all of the above design principles. They change the cursor style whenever you scroll into a hit area, use emotive and creative micro-copy for all button texts and clearly distinguish between different homepage elements.

  

  How to Make Your Homepage Design Even More Impactful ? 

  Website homepage design is roughly 20% of pure design work and 80% of behind-the-scenes research. 

  To design a high-performing homepage you need to have data-backed answers to the following questions : 

  • Who are your primary and secondary target audiences ? 
  • Which tasks (1 to 4) you’d want to help them solve through your homepage ?

  You can get the answers to both questions from your web analytics data by using audience segmentation and page transition (behaviour flow) reports in Matomo. 

  Based on these, you can determine common user journeys and tasks people look to accomplish when visiting your website. Next, you can collect even more data with UBA tools  like heatmaps and user session recordings. Then translated the observed patterns into working homepage design ideas. 

  Improve your homepage design and conversion rates with Matomo. Start your free 21-day trial now ! 

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• Overthinking My Search Engine Problem

  31 décembre 2013, par Multimedia Mike — General

  I wrote a search engine for my Game Music Appreciation website, because the site would have been significantly less valuable without it (and I would eventually realize that the search feature is probably the most valuable part of this endeavor). I came up with a search solution that was a bit sketchy, but worked… until it didn’t. I thought of a fix but still searched for more robust and modern solutions (where ‘modern’ is defined as something that doesn’t require compiling a C program into a static CGI script and hoping that it works on a server I can’t debug on).

  Finally, I realized that I was overthinking the problem– did you know that a bunch of relational database management systems (RDBMSs) support full text search (FTS) ? Okay, maybe you did, but I didn’t know this.

  Problem Statement
  My goal is to enable users to search the metadata (title, composer, copyright, other tags) attached to various games. To do this, I want to index a series of contrived documents that describe the metadata. 2 examples of these contrived documents, interesting because both of these games have very different titles depending on region, something the search engine needs to account for :

  system : Nintendo NES
  game : Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular
  author : None ; copyright : 1988 Kemco ; dumped by : None
  additional tags : Donald Duck.nsf Donald Duck
  system : Super Nintendo
  
  game : Arcana
  
  author : Jun Ishikawa, Hirokazu Ando ; copyright : 1992 HAL Laboratory ; dumped by : Datschge
  
  additional tags : card.rsn.gamemusic Card Master Cardmaster
  

  The index needs to map these documents to various pieces of game music and the search solution needs to efficiently search these documents and find the various game music entries that match a user’s request.

  Now that I’ve been looking at it for long enough, I’m able to express the problem surprisingly succinctly. If I had understood that much originally, this probably would have been simpler.

  First Solution & Breakage
  My original solution was based on SWISH-E. The CGI script was a C program that statically linked the SWISH-E library into a binary that miraculously ran on my web provider. At least, it ran until it decided to stop working a month ago when I added a new feature unrelated to search. It was a very bizarre problem, the details of which would probably bore you to tears. But if you care, the details are all there in the Stack Overflow question I asked on the matter.

  While no one could think of a direct answer to the problem, I eventually thought of a roundabout fix. The problem seemed to pertain to the static linking. Since I couldn’t count on the relevant SWISH-E library to be on my host’s system, I uploaded the shared library to the same directory as the CGI script and used dlopen()/dlsym() to fetch the functions I needed. It worked again, but I didn’t know for how long.

  Searching For A Hosted Solution
  I know that anything is possible in this day and age ; while my web host is fairly limited, there are lots of solutions for things like this and you can deploy any technology you want, and for reasonable prices. I figured that there must be a hosted solution out there.

  I have long wanted a compelling reason to really dive into Amazon Web Services (AWS) and this sounded like a good opportunity. After all, my script works well enough ; if I could just find a simple Linux box out there where I could install the SWISH-E library and compile the CGI script, I should be good to go. AWS has a free tier and I started investigating this approach. But it seems like a rabbit hole with a lot of moving pieces necessary for such a simple task.

  I had heard that AWS had something in this area. Sure enough, it’s called CloudSearch. However, I’m somewhat discouraged by the fact that it would cost me around $75 per month to run the smallest type of search instance which is at the core of the service.

  Finally, I came to another platform called Heroku. It’s supposed to be super-scalable while having a free tier for hobbyists. I started investigating FTS on Heroku and found this article which recommends using the FTS capabilities of their standard hosted PostgreSQL solution. However, the free tier of Postgres hosting only allows for 10,000 rows of data. Right now, my database has about 5400 rows. I expect it to easily overflow the 10,000 limit as soon as I incorporate the C64 SID music corpus.

  However, this Postgres approach planted a seed.

  RDBMS Revelation
  I have 2 RDBMSs available on my hosting plan– MySQL and SQLite (the former is a separate service while SQLite is built into PHP). I quickly learned that both have FTS capabilities. Since I like using SQLite so much, I elected to leverage its FTS functionality. And it’s just this simple :

  CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE gamemusic_metadata_fts USING fts3
  ( content TEXT, game_id INT, title TEXT ) ;
  SELECT id, title FROM gamemusic_metadata_fts WHERE content MATCH "arcana" ;
  
  479|Arcana
  

  The ‘content’ column gets the metadata pseudo-documents. The SQL gets wrapped up in a little PHP so that it queries this small database and turns the result into JSON. The script is then ready as a drop-in replacement for the previous script.