Shopify Inc and Google Cloud have announced a new integration that enables retailers to improve their Google-quality search capabilities. Merchants can now use advanced search and browse experiences using Google Cloud’s Discovery AI solution to enhance user experience and prevent search abandonment.
About search abandonment
New research has revealed that search abandonment can cost the world’s retail industry more than £2 trillion annually. Many shoppers depend on the search function when shopping, but their search experiences lack consistency with only 1 in 10 US shoppers saying they get exact results from their queries.
Search abandonment occurs when a shopper searches for a product on a retailer’s website or mobile app but doesn’t find what they are looking for and subsequently clicks away. Google Cloud have integrated with Shopify to put the power of AI into the hands of the enterprise merchants and brands to help solve the problem.
Google Cloud’s Discovery AI Solutions
Enterprise brands on Shopify can now access Google Cloud’s Discovery AI solutions through Commerce Components. This integration enables brands to work with existing technology and build with Shopify to provide the right combination of flexibility, scale and agility for enterprise. Available in most languages, the integration increases access to Google’s advanced search and browsing technologies, so retailers can create enhanced shopping experiences for their customers.
Shopify and Google Cloud’s integration provides enterprise brands with the following artificial intelligence (AI) driven product discovery capabilities:
Google Cloud Retail Research: Advances query understanding to produce better results to broad queries.
AI-powered browse feature: Uses machine learning to select optimal ordering of products on a retailer’s e-commerce site once shoppers choose a category.
AI-driven personalisation capability: Customises the results users get when they search and browse retailers’ websites.
Google Cloud Recommendations AI solution: Helps retailers deliver personalised recommendations on a larger scale.
Advanced security and privacy practices: Ensures retailer data is isolated with strong access controls and is only used to deliver relevant search results.
Case Study: Rainbow Shops
Rainbow shops, a national fashion retailer with over 1,000 locations, recently integrated Google Cloud’s Discovery AI for Retail technology directly into its own digital domains. In just 3 months, the firm saw an increase of 48% in its search volumes and a three times reduction in bounce rates on its e-commerce properties. Furthermore, it only took less than a week for Google’s AI tools to be successfully integrated into the firm’s online store and mobile app.
Why does this matter?
Shopify and Google Cloud are using their long-standing partnership to bring together the best in commerce with the best in search, to help solve a very complex and costing problem for enterprise retailers.
“Shopify integrating Google Cloud’s Discovery AI technology into its enterprise retail solution puts the power of AI directly into the hands of merchants and brands to solve everyday problems,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
With search abandonment currently a huge hurdle for retailers to overcome, integrating AI technology into search experiences will enable retailers to create a much better, and more fulfilling, shopping experience for customers.
Author spike.digital