Keyword search is failing shoppers, and Voyado has the ability to resolve this for its client, H&M. Working with Voyado, the retail-first agentic CX suite, H&M moved from basic keyword matching to intent-driven discovery across more than 60 markets. The result: customer exits down 30% and soft exits reduced by 80%.
Search is one of the highest-intent moments in the customer journey – and one of the most mishandled. Most retail search engines are still built around basic keyword matching that can’t understand what customers actually mean or want. For H&M, operating at a global scale with an almost infinite number of product combinations, that gap was costing them significantly.
Working with Voyado, H&M built an intent-driven model that reads a richer set of real-world signals simultaneously – including purchase behaviour, add-to-bag actions, stock availability, revenue performance, product newness and real-time customer intent – updating rankings continuously rather than periodically. The shift is from retrieval to understanding: not ‘what matches this word?’ but ‘what does this customer actually want?’
The results speak for themselves. Customer exits dropped by 30%, with more people finding reasons to stay, explore and buy. Soft exits, where customers drift away due to friction rather than choice, were reduced by 80%. Together, these numbers tell a single story: relevance never goes out of fashion. When customers feel understood, they stay. When they stay, they discover. When they discover, they buy.
“As our business grew, we needed a more intelligent approach to search, ranking, and discovery. We found Voyado to be the best fit for us.” said Lars Gezelius, Acting Global Head of Digital at H&M,
H&M has worked with Voyado for several years. The H&M search overhaul demonstrates what the infrastructure can deliver in practice. It also signals what becomes possible when a retailer commits to understanding its customers rather than simply cataloguing its products.
Erica Sandelin Ekelund, CEO at Voyado, said: “Search is a clear signal of what customers actually want. When a customer searches, they’re not browsing – they’re telling you. And many retailers are throwing that signal away. H&M recognised the value and used it to rebuild their customer experience from the ground up – and the numbers confirm they were right. The most successful retailers won’t be those with the most extensive catalogues. They’ll be the ones who understand their customers and what they actually came for.”
For Voyado, H&M represents one of the most significant proof points for what its suite can deliver at enterprise scale. But the implications stretch beyond one retailer. The era of one-size-fits-all ecommerce is ending. Customers no longer expect to browse and find; they expect brands to understand what they want before they’ve even searched.
