Shopify merchants can now deploy advanced
search and browse experiences using Google Cloud's Discovery AI
solution; Rainbow Shops the first to see success
- New research finds that search abandonment—when a shopper
searches for a product on a retailer's website or mobile app, but
doesn't find what they are looking for—costs the retail industry
more than $2 trillion annually
globally
- Google Cloud integration with Shopify puts the power of AI
directly into the hands of enterprise merchants and brands to solve
the pervasive problem of search abandonment
- Rainbow Shops has leveraged Google Cloud's AI technology to
increase search volume by 48% and slash bounce rate on visits
three-fold on its ecommerce properties
SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 23,
2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Ahead of Shoptalk 2023, one of
the retail industry's most important events, Shopify Inc.
(NYSE:SHOP)(TSX:SHOP) and Google Cloud today announced a new
integration that enables retailers using Commerce
Components—Shopify's enterprise retail solution—to leverage
Google-quality search capabilities and AI innovations.
Enterprise brands on Shopify can today access Google Cloud's
Discovery Al solutions directly through Commerce Components,
Shopify's modern, composable stack for enterprise retail. This
integration, which can now be used by Shopify merchants globally
and is available in most languages, increases access to Google's
advanced search and browsing technologies so that retailers can
create more fluid and fruitful shopping experiences for their
customers.
Shopify and Google Cloud's new integration equips enterprise
brands with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven product discovery
capabilities that address real-world business challenges,
including:
- Google Cloud Retail Search, which provides advanced
query understanding that can produce better results from even broad
queries, including non-product and semantic searches, to
effectively match product attributes with website content for fast,
relevant product discovery.
- An AI-powered browse feature that uses machine learning
to select the optimal ordering of products on a retailer's
ecommerce site once shoppers choose a category, like "women's
jackets" or "kitchenware." Over time, the AI learns the preferred
product ordering for each page on an ecommerce site using
historical data, optimizing how and what products are shown for
accuracy, relevance, and likelihood of making a sale.
- An AI-driven personalization capability that customizes
the results customers get when they search and browse retailers'
websites. The AI underpinning the personalization capability uses a
customer's behavior on an ecommerce site, such as their clicks,
cart, purchases, and other information, to determine shopper taste
and preferences.
- A Google Cloud Recommendations AI solution that helps
retailers deliver personalized recommendations at scale. Recent
upgrades to Recommendations AI can make a retailer's ecommerce
properties even more personalized, dynamic and helpful for
individual customers.
- Advanced security and privacy practices that help ensure
retailer data is isolated with strong access controls and is only
used to deliver relevant search results on their own
properties.
"We're thrilled to continue our long-standing partnership with
Google Cloud," said Harley
Finkelstein, President of Shopify. "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."
"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.
"Now, retailers will be able to enhance their digital properties
with better product discovery experiences, creating more fulfilling
shopping experiences for their customers."
Rainbow Shops builds a better customer experience with Google
Cloud search technology
Rainbow Shops, a Shopify merchant and popular retail apparel
chain with more than 1,000 stores, recently integrated Google
Cloud's Discovery AI for Retail technology directly into its own
digital domains. After experiencing limitations with other search
and product discovery solutions, Rainbow Shops approached Shopify
about the possibility of using Google Cloud's search and browse
capabilities.
When compared to other specialty search services, Rainbow Shops'
internal testing found that Google Cloud's solution could deliver
helpful results to an assortment of test queries 100% of the time.
In addition to accuracy, Rainbow Shops saw an immediate reduction
in the amount of time and effort its teams previously spent on
manually refining search results, creating redirects, and pulling
up to 50 other levers to get useful results.
Rainbow Shops is now using Google Cloud's Retail Search
technology, and importantly, it took less than a week for Google
Cloud's AI tools to be successfully integrated into Rainbow Shops'
online store and mobile app—all right before last year's peak
shopping moment for the retailer, Cyber Week.
"Now our search bar can handle almost anything our shoppers
throw at it, surfacing helpful product results for nuanced queries
like 'lbd' (little black dress) and extremely general searches like
'Mardi Gras.' We've also significantly advanced our ability to
produce relevant results when a shopper has a typo in their query,
which is commonly seen among our many customers now shopping on
mobile devices," said David Cost,
vice president of Ecommerce and Marketing, Rainbow Shops. "Rainbow
Shops is using Google Cloud's AI tools to create an undeniably
better shopping experience for our customers. In just three months
we've already seen search volume increase 48% and our bounce rate
on visits has decreased three-fold."
Consistency lacking in retailer search experiences, resulting
in search abandonment
Despite the continued rise in online shopping, many shoppers
report hurdles in the product discovery experience on retailers'
ecommerce properties. New research from a Google Cloud-commissioned
Harris Poll survey found that search abandonment—when a
shopper searches for a product on a retailer's website or mobile
app, but doesn't find what they are looking for—costs retailers
more than $2 trillion annually
globally1, and more than $234 billion in the U.S. alone.
Shoppers themselves say they depend on the search function or
search box when shopping; it's the most common way U.S. consumers
search for products on retail websites (69%), followed closely by
general website browsing (63%). The problem is that retailers'
search experiences lack consistency, as only one in 10 U.S.
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. In fact, more than three in four U.S. consumers
(76%) say that in the past month they have used the search function
or search box on a retail website and it did not provide the item
they were looking for.
Read more about the study.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to
digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade
solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on
the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200
countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted
partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business
problems.
About Shopify
Shopify is a leading provider of essential internet
infrastructure for commerce, offering trusted tools to start, grow,
market, and manage a retail business of any size. Shopify makes
commerce better for everyone with a platform and services that are
engineered for reliability, while delivering a better shopping
experience for consumers everywhere. Proudly founded in Ottawa,
Shopify powers millions of businesses in more than 175 countries
and is trusted by brands such as Allbirds, Gymshark, Heinz,
Tupperware, FTD, Netflix, FIGS, and many more. For more
information, visit www.shopify.com.
About Rainbow Shops
Fashion at prices you'll love.™ Rainbow is a national fashion
retailer with over 1,000 locations in the
United States, Puerto Rico
and the US Virgin Islands as well as RainbowShops.com. We offer a
wide selection of women's, juniors, plus size, and children's
clothing, as well as shoes and accessories. With hundreds of new
styles arriving every day in stores and online, Rainbow is the
ultimate purveyor of must-have looks in fast fashion. Headquartered
in Brooklyn, NY, Rainbow has been
the final say in affordable style since 1935.
Citations and Research Methodology
The survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf
of Google Cloud from November 29 –
December 5, 2022 among 1,008 adults
aged 18+ who have visited a retail website and used the search
function on a retail website in the past six months.
Data are weighted where necessary by age by sex, race/ethnicity,
region, education, income, household size, marital status, and
propensity to be online to bring them in line with their actual
proportions in the population.
Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who
have agreed to participate in our surveys. The sampling precision
of Harris online polls is measured
by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample
data is accurate to within ±4.3 percentage points using a 95%
confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among
subsets of the surveyed population of interest.
All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use
probability sampling, are subject to other multiple sources of
error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate,
including, but not limited to coverage error, error associated with
nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response
options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments.
A few questions from the US survey were fielded as part of a
smaller global survey that was conducted online within Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Italy,
Japan, Mexico, South
Korea, Spain, and the UK by
The Harris Poll on behalf of Google Cloud from November 30 – December 2,
2022 among 13,407 adults ages 18 and older, including 12,456
who have used the search function on a retail website in the past
six months. Results were weighted where necessary to align them
with their actual proportions in the population.
1 Local currencies in each country
were converted to USD using conversion rates from March 16, 2023
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SOURCE Google Inc.