It’s an all too familiar, and frustrating, issue: Looking for a particular item on an eCommerce website only to come up short, or worse, get suggestions for completely unrelated products. According to research conducted by The Harris Poll, 94 percent of consumers globally received irrelevant results while search on a retailer’s website in the last six months, and 85 percent say they view a brand differently after experiencing search difficulties.
All this adds up to a $300 billion “search abandonment” problem for U.S. retailers wherein consumers walk away from an eCommerce site having bought nothing because of search frustrations.
“The quality of search on these retailers’ websites has a lot of scope for improvement,” Srikanth Belwadi, group product manager at Google Cloud, told PYMNTS.
To that end, Google Cloud this week is rolling out a new Retail Search product, built on Google’s decades of search experience in an effort to reduce search abandonment. Part of Google Cloud’s existing suite of tools for retailers, Google Cloud Retail Search allows retailers to enhance consumer experiences with personalized results and relevant promotions.
While traditional search platforms are keyword-based, Belwadi said, Retail Search is machine-learning-based, allowing it to improve every time it’s used by a consumer.
“This is a problem that I think requires so much attention form the industry” as consumer behavior continues to shift, he said. “Just in the last few years, the acceleration of eCommerce actually makes this problem even more urgent than it was before.”
But while Google may be uniquely positioned to give retailers’ search capabilities a boost, the company also has a history of canceling features and products, which may make some brands hesitant to jump on board. According to the Killed By Google tracker, a total of 232 apps, services and hardware have been terminated by the online giant.
A Customizable Experience
Google Cloud spent months working in a beta mode with some retailers, including Macy’s, to get feedback on Retail Search and learn more about what they needed to optimize the product. One of the most important takeaways, Belwadi said, is that it’s not just about finding the most relevant products, but it’s also about meeting retailers — and consumers — where they are.
“There are so many things happening in the retail industry beyond relevance” to search terms, he said, including where the products are available, price fluctuations, “and all the controls and configurations that every retailer or merchandiser will want.”
That complication makes Retail Search more than just a web search product that’s imported to retail websites — customization for the needs of the retailer and its customers is a key component.
“Every business is different,” Belwadi said. “In fact, every geography is different and every user is different, and that’s why we want to make sure that we create the right experience.”
Jilberto Soto, director of search product management at Macy’s, said the retailer saw improved click-through rates and revenue per visit during its pilot experience with Google Cloud Retail Search.
“Understanding our customers’ needs and being able to deliver results seamlessly is critical to providing an enjoyable shopping experience,” Soto said in a statement.
Abandonment Issues
As eCommerce accelerates, retailers are increasingly focused on their abandonment issues, though most primarily look at cart abandonment, which affects 75 percent of purchases globally and can cost merchants about $4 trillion annually, PYMNTS has reported. Shipping charges, a lack of preferred payment options and complicated website navigation are some of the most common reasons for cart abandonment, while recent PYMNTS research found that 21 percent of consumers ditched purchases because checking out took too long.
Belwadi said search abandonment, however, is potentially a larger issue, as retailers can’t address cart abandonment if consumers can’t find what they’re looking for in the first place.
And search abandonment is nothing new — for decades, consumers have left stores empty-handed after unsuccessfully finding what they were looking for on retail shelves.
“We’re trying to essentially solve for quality of search so that we can reduce the abandonment and create a better experience for both the retailer’s users but also for retailers in terms of better conversion rates,” Belwadi said.
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