How Forward-Thinking Retailers & Wholesalers Are Leveraging Next-Gen Search to Revolutionize Their Customer Experiences

Artificial Intelligence is causing a seismic shift across all aspects of our lives, both professional and personal. The digital landscape is witnessing a surge in customers flocking to online channels, demanding personalized experiences delivered by next-generation search and product discovery solutions.

In a recent webinar panel titled "Next-Gen eCommerce Search and Product Discovery Solutions for Forward-Thinking Retailers & Wholesalers," three industry experts discussed how search is changing the retail landscape: Arv Natarajan,GroupBy’s Director of Product, Noah Freeman, Senior Product Manager at Google Cloud AI, and Stanislav Stolpovskiy, Head of Search Practice at Grid Dynamics. Together, they discussed how to leverage next-generation search to overcome today’s most pressing eCommerce challenges and revolutionize the eCommerce customer journey.

Search is Pivotal

The power of search cannot be understated; it can make or break an eCommerce business.

In today's digital world, both B2B and B2C customers crave lightning-fast, seamlessly customized search experiences that only next-generation AI-powered solutions can provide. However, research from Google reveals that a staggering 82% of consumers steer clear of websites that offer an arduous search process, leading to a global loss of $2 trillion each year due to search abandonment. As such, it is abundantly clear that legacy search systems inflict significant damage on retailers' sales by undermining customer experience.

This means search holds the key to unlocking the vast potential of eCommerce. Unfortunately, traditional keyword-based search solutions pose numerous challenges for retailers, including relevance, ranking, and personalization difficulties.

The Limitations of Legacy Search

Legacy search engines are built on keyword-matching technology. As such, they routinely stumble when it comes to delivering highly relevant search results, often failing to align returned products with the shopper's intent.

Although less obvious, legacy search also struggles when it comes to ranking. And ranking issues come with a hefty price tag. Even if a legacy search engine manages to display relevant items, those items will not be displayed in an order that maximizes revenue. Some attempts have been made to upgrade and enhance these legacy systems by layering AI on top, but they still struggle to match the Google-quality search results customers have come to expect today. Today's customers demand search engines that not only comprehend their intent but also yield relevant results from broad queries.

The Advantages of Next-Generation Search

In stark contrast to legacy systems, next-generation search relies solely on the prowess of AI.

Enter Google Cloud Retail Search, the unparalleled solution in this new era. Leveraging AI and natural language processing, it understands queries, employs AI-driven ranking and personalization, and self-curates while learning from past mistakes. No manual intervention is required as it automatically arranges products in revenue-maximizing order.

This cutting-edge search engine learns from the data and insights harvested from Google's flagship properties, such as Google.com, Google Shopping, and YouTube. When combined with a customer's product catalog and shopper data, the result is an unmatched, highly personalized customer experience that delivers search results driven by true user intent. In A/B tests against legacy search solutions, this next-generation search engine is undefeated.

Optimized Search and Product Discovery

A whopping 69% of all retail customers rely on search functionality to discover products while shopping online! This makes search the heart of product discovery online.

And this is why GroupBy’s unbeatable search engine powers GroupBy's all-in-one Search and Product Discovery Platform. By harnessing Google's years of expertise in next-generation search AI, GroupBy’s platform can deliver exceptional digital customer experiences. This all-in-one platform, encompasses Data Enrichment, Search, Autocomplete, Browse, Recommendations, Merchandising, and Reporting & Analytics, granting B2B and B2C enterprise retailers and wholesalers access to their essential product discovery functions all in one place.

GroupBy's intuitive merchandising platform empowers merchandisers to craft impactful customer campaigns that optimize vital eCommerce metrics. The custom-built UI allows effortless management of essential search functions, while Google’s next-generation AI dramatically reduces their workload. With the AI autonomously learning and improving, merchandising teams are freed up to focus on product placement and selling, rather than fretting over search relevancy.

Enhance The Search Experience

Within GroupBy's platform, merchandisers can access actionable insights through built-in analytics and reporting. Additionally, Data Enrichment augments, corrects, and normalizes eCommerce product data, ensuring products become more discoverable, thereby enhancing search relevancy and results. By addressing the root cause of poor search data, GroupBy solves the age-old proverbial problem of "garbage in, garbage out."

By embracing a next-generation search and product discovery solution tailored specifically for eCommerce applications, retailers consistently witness a remarkable 10%+ increase in revenue after transitioning from legacy search platforms. For enterprise-scale retailers, this translates to millions of dollars annually, and that's not accounting for the lower total cost of ownership.

Excellence Through Partnership

GroupBy collaborates with exceptional companies like Google and Grid Dynamics; true game-changers in the eCommerce landscape. While Google provides the revolutionary next-generation search engine, GroupBy crafts the ultimate product discovery eCommerce experience that streamlines workflows and reduces total cost of ownership.

Grid Dynamics complements this partnership by maximizing ROI through expert implementation.

Migrating from a legacy system to next-generation search poses its own set of challenges, but Grid Dynamics specializes in swift, seamless transitions, even for the most complex B2B and B2C use cases. Their rapid implementation process accelerates time-to-market to as little as five-to-seven weeks! And of course, a faster time to market means a faster time to ROI!

Together, GroupBy, Google, and Grid Dynamics equip your organization with the tools to deliver unparalleled customer experiences powered by next-generation AI-driven search, while reaping a whole host of other benefits.

The Time for Change is Now

In the realm of online shopping, offering the best deal is no longer sufficient; creating the ultimate customer experience is paramount. Especially because customer behavior has shifted, with long-tail queries taking center stage. Gone are the days when customers would laboriously search, filter, and endlessly refine their queries. In fact, 78% of online shoppers confess that they are less loyal to a brand when finding what they desire becomes an arduous task.

The modern customer demands eCommerce search engines that truly understand their intent, deliver swift and relevant results, and provide personalized recommendations. It's perplexing why some websites persist with legacy search solutions that fail to grasp what customers seek.

Tap into Next Generation Search

GroupBy, Google Cloud, and Grid Dynamics stand at the forefront of a technological revolution, reshaping the eCommerce landscape. By infusing Google's groundbreaking AI at the core of GroupBy's platform and enlisting the expertise of search implementation specialists like Grid Dynamics, these three industry leaders create extraordinary customer experiences for the world's most trusted brands. Together, they empower organizations to optimize customer experiences, accelerate time-to-market, and boost ROI, all thanks to AI-powered search.