Home and living ecommerce company home24 is improving product search on its website and mobile app by teaming up with US-based tech company Constructor. Through the partnership, home24 shoppers benefit from more feature-rich, intuitive and personalized experiences when searching for items to use in and decorate their homes.
It’s a win-win for both home24 shoppers and home24 itself: With Constructor’s artificial intelligence (AI)-based platform for product search and discovery, home24 has elevated the customer experience, while realizing double-digit growth in search conversion.
“We’re committed to providing an outstanding experience to our shoppers across channels, and product search is a big part of that,” said Gianluca Randisi, VP of product, home24. “Thanks to our work with Constructor, it’s even easier for shoppers to search for – and find – the best items for them. Aside from the positive return on investment, we love the ease of use and hands-on support that come from working with Constructor.”
Searching for a change
A leading ecommerce company with more than EUR 600 million ($640 million USD) in annual revenue, home24 serves seven European markets – Germany, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Italy – as well as Brazil. Through its product catalog and curated marketplace, the company offers hundreds of thousands of items, with more than 200,000 SKUs: spanning furniture, tabletop accessories and much more.
With such a large selection, there’s something for everyone and every budget. But prior to Constructor, it had been difficult for home24 to help shoppers quickly and easily discover the items they love. Its online search solution had just a limited number of fields for searchability – with shoppers unable to get results for specific, multi-part queries such as “bed without box spring” or “lamp with three bulbs.” Shoppers also were unable to filter search results by key attributes such as size, style, material, color and price. Given these limitations, home24’s ecommerce team found itself manually implementing redirects to category pages – work that became unmanageable as the business grew.
Tapping into AI-powered search
home24 turned to Constructor to improve the search experience across European markets and better transform search results into revenue. Headquartered in San Francisco, USA, Constructor has significantly expanded its European business over the past year, while seeing strong growth among retailers like home24 in the home goods and furnishing sector.
Using clickstream behavioral data, AI and advanced machine-learning algorithms, Constructor’s platform surfaces search results that are personalized to each shopper and their journey across channels, as well as optimized to home24’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Constructor also uses natural language processing (NLP) to instantly infer intent, even from more complicated search queries, and makes it easy for home24 shoppers to filter results to find the right products faster.
“Our huge product assortment is important to our business, and it’s something our customers love,” said Init Khurana, senior product manager, home24. “But with a big catalog, we have a big responsibility to shoppers: We need to make it easy and enjoyable for them to find what they want and need. Now, with Constructor’s technology, when shoppers across channels search for items, they instantly see attractive results that prioritize their tastes, history and in-the-moment needs.”
In addition, Constructor’s “searchandising” capabilities – such as autosuggest, analytics, AI-powered synonyms and more – are giving the home24 team hours back in their day, since they enable shoppers to search more effectively and efficiently. On top of the double-digit increase in search conversion, these capabilities are leading to additional revenue gains for home24.
“Shoppers today have high expectations, and rightfully so – they know what they want, and they need to locate it easily and immediately, or else they’ll search elsewhere,” said Eli Finkelshteyn, Constructor CEO. “Leading and innovative ecommerce companies like home24 are using AI to help shoppers find the items they need and discover others they’ll love. We’re proud to partner with home24 to create winning search experiences.”
