A Google Cloud-commissioned Harris Poll survey found that search abandonment—when a consumer looks for a product doesn’t find it, and leaves—costs retailers around the world $2 trillion annually.
Within Canada, more than half of shoppers are not completing their online purchase journeys because they cannot find what they are looking for, amounting to losses of more than $100 billion each year for online retailers across the country.
Ottawa fintech Shopify believes deploying artificial intelligence is one key to mitigating this problem.
Ahead of Shoptalk 2023, Shopify and Google Cloud have announced a new integration that enables retailers using Commerce Components to leverage Google-quality search capabilities and AI innovations in order to solve abandonment and related e-commerce issues.
“We’re thrilled to continue our long-standing partnership with Google Cloud,” stated Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify.
Enterprise brands on Shopify can access Google Cloud’s Discovery Al solutions through Commerce Components, Shopify’s composable stack for enterprise retail. This integration, which can be used by Shopify merchants globally in most languages, increases access to Google’s advanced search and browsing technologies.
“We’re bringing together the best in commerce with the best in search to solve a complex and costly problem for enterprise retailers—world-class search and discovery for the online store,” Finkelstein added.
These advanced technologies include Retail Search, which provides query understanding that can produce better results to effectively match product attributes with website content for fast, relevant product discovery, as well as an AI-driven personalization capability that customizes the results customers get when they search and browse retailers’ websites.
Shopify integrating Google Cloud’s Discovery AI technology into its enterprise retail solution puts power “directly into the hands of merchants and brands to solve everyday problems,” stated Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. It “enables brands to quickly deploy the power of AI.”
Search boxes are the most common way consumers search for products on retail websites (69%), according to the survey. The problem is that retailers’ search experiences lack consistency, as only one in 10 shoppers say they get exact results for their queries (12%) or good alternatives (11%) every time they use the search function on a retailer’s site.
“It’s a massive problem that we’re excited to help enterprise retailers solve through our continued work with Google,” said Finkelstein.
Three in four consumers (76%) say that in the past month they have used the search function on a retail website and it did not provide the item they were looking for.
Moving forward, however, “Retailers will be able to enhance their digital properties with better product discovery experiences, creating more fulfilling shopping experiences for their customers,” according to Kurian.
“By making it easier for retailers to create best-in-class product discovery experiences, shoppers can now find exactly what they want faster,” he said.
Shopify, one of many fintechs using AI, launched Commerce Components earlier this year.
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