Search by Algolia
Introducing new developer-friendly pricing
algolia

Introducing new developer-friendly pricing

Hey there, developers! At Algolia, we believe everyone should have the opportunity to bring a best-in-class search experience ...

Nick Vlku

VP of Product Growth

What is online visual merchandising?
e-commerce

What is online visual merchandising?

Eye-catching mannequins. Bright, colorful signage. Soothing interior design. Exquisite product displays. In short, amazing store merchandising. For shoppers in ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

Introducing the new Algolia no-code data connector platform
engineering

Introducing the new Algolia no-code data connector platform

Ingesting data should be easy, but all too often, it can be anything but. Data can come in many different ...

Keshia Rose

Staff Product Manager, Data Connectivity

Customer-centric site search trends
e-commerce

Customer-centric site search trends

Everyday there are new messages in the market about what technology to buy, how to position your company against the ...

Piyush Patel

Chief Strategic Business Development Officer

What is online retail merchandising? An introduction
e-commerce

What is online retail merchandising? An introduction

Done any shopping on an ecommerce website lately? If so, you know a smooth online shopper experience is not optional ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

5 considerations for Black Friday 2023 readiness
e-commerce

5 considerations for Black Friday 2023 readiness

It’s hard to imagine having to think about Black Friday less than 4 months out from the previous one ...

Piyush Patel

Chief Strategic Business Development Officer

How to increase your sales and ROI with optimized ecommerce merchandising
e-commerce

How to increase your sales and ROI with optimized ecommerce merchandising

What happens if an online shopper arrives on your ecommerce site and: Your navigation provides no obvious or helpful direction ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

Mobile search UX best practices, part 3: Optimizing display of search results
ux

Mobile search UX best practices, part 3: Optimizing display of search results

In part 1 of this blog-post series, we looked at app interface design obstacles in the mobile search experience ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

Mobile search UX best practices, part 2: Streamlining search functionality
ux

Mobile search UX best practices, part 2: Streamlining search functionality

In part 1 of this series on mobile UX design, we talked about how designing a successful search user experience ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

Mobile search UX best practices, part 1: Understanding the challenges
ux

Mobile search UX best practices, part 1: Understanding the challenges

Welcome to our three-part series on creating winning search UX design for your mobile app! This post identifies developer ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

Teaching English with Zapier and Algolia
engineering

Teaching English with Zapier and Algolia

National No Code Day falls on March 11th in the United States to encourage more people to build things online ...

Alita Leite da Silva

How AI search enables ecommerce companies to boost revenue and cut costs
ai

How AI search enables ecommerce companies to boost revenue and cut costs

Consulting powerhouse McKinsey is bullish on AI. Their forecasting estimates that AI could add around 16 percent to global GDP ...

Michelle Adams

Chief Revenue Officer at Algolia

What is digital product merchandising?
e-commerce

What is digital product merchandising?

How do you sell a product when your customers can’t assess it in person: pick it up, feel what ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

Scaling marketplace search with AI
ai

Scaling marketplace search with AI

It is clear that for online businesses and especially for Marketplaces, content discovery can be especially challenging due to the ...

Bharat Guruprakash

Chief Product Officer

The changing face of digital merchandising
e-commerce

The changing face of digital merchandising

This 2-part feature dives into the transformational journey made by digital merchandising to drive positive ecommerce experiences. Part 1 ...

Reshma Iyer

Director of Product Marketing, Ecommerce

What’s a convolutional neural network and how is it used for image recognition in search?
ai

What’s a convolutional neural network and how is it used for image recognition in search?

A social media user is shown snapshots of people he may know based on face-recognition technology and asked if ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

What’s organizational knowledge and how can you make it accessible to the right people?
product

What’s organizational knowledge and how can you make it accessible to the right people?

How’s your company’s organizational knowledge holding up? In other words, if an employee were to leave, would they ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

Adding trending recommendations to your existing e-commerce store
engineering

Adding trending recommendations to your existing e-commerce store

Recommendations can make or break an online shopping experience. In a world full of endless choices and infinite scrolling, recommendations ...

Ashley Huynh

Looking for something?

Composable Commerce: how to improve omnichannel product discovery experience

Sep 9th 2021 ecommerce

Composable Commerce: how to improve omnichannel product discovery experience
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The first audience you want to expose your product catalog to is your shoppers. While your ecommerce website search, navigation, and recommendations are the obvious first place to do so (check our blog series in the table below to learn more about this part of the experience), there are many other ways to engage your shoppers directly—online and in-store.

In this series, we’ll show you how you can leverage composable components to build ecommerce tools that best showcase your business.

Best practices to build an online store providing shoppers with a top notch shopping experience.

Best practices for eCommerce personalization

Best ways to leverage AI to optimize a user conversion

How to increase online sales with Search Merchandising

How to boost online sales with Category Merchandising

Online Outfit Builder Tool

App: Online Outfit Builder

Medium: Online Store

Goal/problem solved: 

  • Eliminate the need for customer service, support rep, or sales associate’s help
  • Increase revenue by allowing product customization in a fun visual way
  • Decrease production times by collecting user customization requests in real time, increasing customer satisfaction as well

Main user: Online store customer

Stitch together the in-store sales associate’s support with an online customization service into a seamless shopping experience. Online outfit builder tools allow product customization in a fun visual way, ensuring customer satisfaction, decreasing production times, and eliminating the need to schedule time for the live sales associate’s customization session.

Customers are presented with a choice of styles, materials, colors and other details, personalized for each user profile, while the product or element’s stock availability and delivery times are verified against the stock management system data, to ensure smooth transaction and customer satisfaction with the online shopping experience.

Chatbots

App: Chatbot Conversational Search

Medium: Online

Goal/problem solved:

  • Retrieve product-related info
  • Assist with product-related questions

Main user: End-customer inquiring about products sold online and in-store via social media platforms

Chatbots are highly useful in providing support to questions online shoppers may have. They allow users to ask questions using a normal language instead of using artificial search queries. With the help of natural language processing (NLP), chatbots extract the user’s intent from their question and offer best matching answers or trigger corresponding actions. Algolia Answers can be easily implemented into existing chatbots by directing only a part of user intents to Algolia Answers while other intents are handled elsewhere. A retailer can take their customer support to the next level by leveraging chatbots to assist shoppers with product-related questions, whether sold online, in-store, or on social media platforms. In addition to providing support related answers to customer questions, and minimizing the costs associated with the live help center representatives team, chatbots could be used for merchandising by informing customers about related products or promotions relevant to their queries.

Email Recommendations

App: Personalized Email Recommendations with Algolia Recommend & Email Marketing Automation Platform

Medium: Online

Goal/problem solved: 

  • Relevancy and personalizations of the product recommendations

Main user: 

  • Member shoppers
  • Shoppers registered with their email in-store or online
  • Shoppers who made at least one purchase in the past

Retailers win customer loyalty by connecting with each customer’s unique shopping preferences and adding a personalized touch to each interaction. Algolia enables shoppers to get relevant and personalized product recommendations directly to their email address. Integrate personalized email recommendations with Algolia Recommend and marketing automation software of your choice: SendGrid, AWS SES, Mailchimp, or Marketo. Cookie-cutter promotional emails are a thing of the past—they go directly to the digital trash bin! Make sure to connect the dots between every interaction by capturing signals from customer behavior and applying those insights across every channel, in real-time. 

Saved Search Alerts

App: Saved Search Alerts with Algolia Search & Email Marketing Automation Platform

Medium: Online

Goal/problem solved: 

  • Meaningful alerts making online shopping easier and faster
  • Follow up and react fast to shoppers’ needs

Main user: 

    • Member shoppers
    • Shoppers registered with their email in-store or online
    • Shoppers interested in a specific product’s availability

Allow smooth back and forth transition between shopping in real-time and async. Sometimes, the perfect product your shoppers are looking for is temporarily out of stock, backordered, or they are interested in a new catalog item that has not yet arrived into the stores. With Saved Search Alerts you can follow up and react fast to shoppers’ needs. Combining Algolia Search with the marketing automation software of your choice: SendGrid, AWS SES, Mailchimp, or Marketo to create meaningful alerts, will let retailers continue the ongoing communication with their customers, even when those are not actively browsing online or physical stores.

Want to build more?

In this series on Composable Commerce, you’ll discover how to use composable APIs to help you create innovative applications based on your product catalog.

About the author
Tanya Herman

Product Manager

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