According to research conducted by The Harris Poll and commissioned by Google Cloud, the amount of money lost to online retailers because the search function or search box did not provide consumers with the item they were looking for, is in excess of $333 billion each year in the US.
After global lockdowns, retailers have had to step up their digital capabilities in a highly competitive space. Massive organisations such as Amazon with over 30% share in the UK are extremely difficult to compete with. However, as Google controls 90% of the global search engine market, businesses are looking at the best ways of using AI and SEO tools to appear towards the top of searches.
The impact of search abandonment.
94% of consumers globally receive search results that are not relevant to what they’re looking for, leading to more than 4 in 5 global consumers ending up feeling frustrated. Search abandonment is a costly industry-wide issue companies are facing today. Customers have a low tolerance for bad search results, especially on retail websites. Impacting both sales and brand loyalty.
How Google is helping retailers.
Google cloud has just launched a new tool to help retailers improve their product search capabilities across their e-commerce platforms. The cloud provider says it gives retailers "Google-quality" search capabilities that are customisable for their own unique business needs.
As data from search analytics is key in decision making, for both consumers and retailers, Google Cloud’s Retail Search allows retailers to provide helpful search experiences including auto-complete, personalised results, and relevant promotions. Retail Search helps retailers understand consumer intent, and map it to product inventory with the help of machine learning-based search results.
Google’s new Retail Search tool is a fully-managed service that joins a suite of other tools Google has created for retailers: Product Discovery Solutions for Retail. Google Cloud's unified Retail API allows developers to easily implement and integrate the search tool with other Product Discovery Solutions, such as Recommendations AI and Vision Product Search.
Get more insights such as where collaboration between in-store and online needs to meet to stay innovative for shoppers, and using technology to make the shopping experience more personalised by listening to Micheal Vax on The FOD – The Future of Digital Commerce podcast. Subscribe to stay up-to-date with relevant eCommerce news and future trends.
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