Need search results to be normal results sort by title, THEN sort by metafield sort_order

Hi All

I am a developer helping the business migrate from BigCommerce. Part of this process,I imported a sort_order native field of BigCommerce which is now a metafield in Shopify.

To my surprise, there is no way to modify the API of Shopify unless you host an external app then can use the admin API etc. It is ridiculous how limiting Shopify are.

We have looked into app such as Boost AI, SOBooster

But alas, none of these apps allow us to do what we are looking for - simply search by product title as usual, but then sort by sort_order. The precedence is the product title.

It appears apps (so far) can only sort by ONE field at a time, resulting in an order which doesn’t match the search term when it is only by sort_order for example.

Has anyone faced this issue and can provide solutions please? Any apps which can handle this requirement?