Findologic joins forces with Nosto

Findologic joins forces with Nosto

It’s finally official! We’ve joined forces with Nosto, the world’s leading Commerce Experience Platform (CXP).

When we first started talking about the idea of uniting with Nosto, I was surprised to discover how closely our visions for the future aligned. In fact, our internal strategy slides were almost identical, while the features were complimentary.

This presented a once in a lifetime opportunity for us because the unique strengths of each company complement each other extremely well. 

Findologic always pioneered when it came to onsite search, recently shown with our achievements around our AI Linguistic Shopping Assistant, not just focusing on the most relevant results, but also understanding the user’s intent and providing new ways of interaction with webshops.

Our product discovery story continues

This merger is the perfect fit. Why? Because we share the same mission as Nosto and want to ensure every online shopping experience is relevant, personalized, and dynamic. I’m thrilled we’re joining forces with Nosto and, together, shaping the future of online commerce experiences.  

What does this mean for you, our customers?

Firstly, nothing will change in the immediate. It’s business as usual.

You can continue to use the Findologic platform as you have done so and will continue to have a relationship with your current contact at Findologic. Your agreement will remain as is and you’ll continue to get the same commitment and value from Findologic post-acquisition. Over time, we will offer you the capability of using Nosto’s full CXP and its comprehensive personalization capabilities.

We are excited about the new opportunities this deal brings for Findologic customers. Being offered access to Nosto’s CXP will open up exciting avenues for you to benefit from a wide range of solutions that can help you achieve full-funnel personalization and deliver 1:1 commerce experiences for every shopper across every device. 

What does this mean for us, Findologic?

It means our entire staff is now part of the Nosto family and can even develop more and better solutions for you. Our HQ in Salzburg, Austria, will remain and serve as an R&D hub with product engineers and commercial teams, together serving the DACH market moving forward. Nosto supports its global customers from New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Sydney, Kaunas, and Helsinki. We’re thrilled to be adding Salzburg and Munich to that list. 

Thank you!

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for trusting Findologic over the last 14 years. The entire team–from customer service managers, engineers, marketing, sales, product owners, and leadership–are all committed to making online commerce experiences ever more intuitive for the individual shopper. This commitment is only strengthened as we continue our journey with Nosto.

Marcel Krabath

Matthias Heimbeck has been developing modern software solutions for online shops since 2008 and is Founder and CEO of Findologic, one of the world’s leading providers today. Just as a helpful sales assistant completes the shopping experience for the in-store customer – so the digital shopping assistant supports and serves the online shopper. This is exactly where our unique approach helps ecommerce businesses. We keep our finger on the pulse with our technology partners, agencies, shop systems and customers - with unparalleled results. 

How AI Product Recommendations Can Benefit Your Online Store

How AI Product Recommendations Can Benefit Your Online Store

Will Jacobs

How AI Product Recommendations Can Benefit Your Online Store

How AI Product Recommendations Can Benefit Your Online Store

If you’re an ecommerce manager, then you know the importance of product recommendations. After all, product recommendations are one of the easiest ways to increase sales and boost customer satisfaction. And while there are many different ways to push your product catalogue, artificial intelligence (AI) product recommendations are quickly becoming the preferred method for many businesses. 

There are many benefits of using AI product recommendations. From increasing conversion rates and sales to boosting customer engagement, AI product recommenders can help your business in a variety of ways. Read this blog to learn the benefits of using AI Product Recommendations on your online store.

 

Firstly, what are AI Product Recommendations?

Simply put, A.I. Product Recommendation engines are AI-based recommendation engines such as data-filtering tools that make use of various algorithms and data to recommend the most relevant products to a particular customer. 

AI product recommendations work by analyzing customer behavior and making predictions about what products they might be interested in. This information is then used to generate personalized recommendations that are displayed to the customer when they visit your site.

One of the advantages of using AI for product recommendations is that it can take into account a wide range of data points, including things like search history, past purchases, and even items that have been added to the shopping cart but not purchased. This allows for a much more comprehensive understanding of the customer’s needs and wants, which leads to more accurate recommendations.

It is influenced by search data and merchandising to ensure the shopper sees the products they are looking for. Think of it like a virtual shopping assistant. 

Today’s site search engines use natural language processing (or NLP) to analyse the search, discern intent, and retrieve the results it thinks the shopper wants. They are much more sophisticated than they used to be and are more focused on honing in on results with greater focus and more precise targeting. NLP is key to that.

 

AI Product Recommendations Are Personalized

One of the biggest benefits of AI product recommendations is that they are highly personalized. Thanks to machine learning, AI-powered product recommendation engines can learn about a customer’s individual preferences and characteristics over time. This means that the recommendations they receive will be more relevant and helpful and connect them with the products they’re looking for. 

This is important because when customers receive personalized recommendations, they’re more likely to make a purchase. In fact, studies have shown that personalized recommendations can increase conversion rates by up to 18%. If you’re not using AI product recommenders, now is the time to start. Be sure to check out Findologic’s own AI shopping assistant, LiSA here to see how you can deliver a better customer experience.

 

AI Product Recommendations Boost Sales and Engagement

If you’re looking for a way to give your ecommerce sales a boost, you may want to consider using AI product recommendations. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, you can provide your customers with tailored recommendations that are more likely to result in a purchase. 

When customers see relevant and helpful recommendations, they’re more likely to purchase those products. And when they’re more engaged with your shopping experience brand, they’re less likely to churn.  

What are the Benefits of AI Product Recommendations

There are several benefits that come from using AI product recommendations, including:

Increased Sales: Perhaps the most obvious benefit of using AI product recommendations is that they can lead to an increase in sales. By providing customers with tailored recommendations, you’re more likely to find items that they’re interested in, which leads to more sales. Additionally, customers who have had a positive experience with your recommendation system are more likely to come back and make additional purchases in the future.

Improved Customer Retention: In addition to increasing sales, AI product recommendations can also lead to improved customer retention. If customers have a positive experience with your site and feel like they’re able to find the products they’re looking for, they’re more likely to continue doing business with you. Furthermore, happy customers are more likely to tell their friends and family about your site, which can lead to even more business.

Greater insights into customer behavior: One of the side benefits of using AI for product recommendations is that it can provide you with greater insights into customer behavior. By analyzing data points like search history and past purchases, you can better understand what customers are looking for and tailor your marketing strategy accordingly. Additionally, if you see that certain items are being recommended frequently but not purchased, it may be indicative of a problem with those products or your overall site design. Either way, it’s valuable information that can be used to improve your business. 

 

Final thoughts

AI product recommendations can offer a number of benefits for ecommerce businesses, including increased sales and improved customer retention. If you’re looking for a way to give your online store a boost, consider leveraging the power of artificial intelligence.

Of course there’s so much more to this subject, and if you’d like to understand more, why not get in touch?

 

Manual merchandising – why it’s costing you and what to do about it

Manual merchandising – why it’s costing you and what to do about it

Will Jacobs

Manual merchandising – why it’s costing you and what to do about it

Manual merchandising – why it’s costing you and what to do about it.

For many online retailers, manual merchandising is holding them back. Businesses struggle to sell particular products at a given point in time, web systems are inflexible, or their merchandising strategies are misinformed, all of which lead to missed opportunities. 

However, by automating key merchandising tasks, your team can improve product visibility and support the overall business strategy. 

In this blog we talk all about manual merchandising – why it’s creating problems for your business, and how you can support kickass automated merchandising.

What is manual merchandising?

Before we talk about the problems of manual merchandising and how to fix them, let’s first discuss what we mean by manual merchandising.

When we refer to manual merchandising, we mean the carrying out of merchandising tasks without automation. 

To give some examples, this might include:

  • Implementing campaigns on your site manually
  • Manually pushing new stock when it becomes available
  • Manually ordering your products
  • Gathering analytics on your own which are often an incomplete picture

This can be frustrating for ecommerce and development teams for a variety of reasons. It’s slow, poorly optimised, and comes at a cost – to both your time and money. It also gives you a poor picture of performance and impacts conversion rate. 

 

What are the challenges of manual merchandising?

There are three key challenges when it comes to manual merchandising.

The first challenge is that many companies struggle to sell certain products and reach their targets. This creates a problem for retailers for instance, because you might have issues managing stock left over from excess promotions. When manually merchandising, you might also find it difficult to push new stock on your website when it becomes available. All of this leads to a loss of revenue.

The second challenge is that your technology platform is set up in a way that is disadvantageous to your merchandising opportunities. Conversion of key products is missed out on as a result. Additionally, you’re spending a lot of time executing tasks that would be better executed with an automation platform anyway.

The third challenge is understanding how to create amazing merchandising strategies for your products that will increase sales. Without the right tool, you won’t be able to drill down and understand how to interpret your ecommerce data. This data might include your best sellers, your new stock, or inventory management.

 

What can merchants do to solve the issue?

There are multiple ways merchants can overcome the issues of manual merchandising. 

Invest in a merchandising platform

Leveraging automation is the first port of call. 

Today’s technology platforms such as Findologic are equipped with merchandising tools that automate manual tasks and allow you to easily identify products that will increase sales on site. 

Web audit

Merchants can also find support across their whole Product Discovery experience, through a full inspection of the website from an outside perspective.

Outside help

You could also work with an external team, allowing you to better understand how best to utilise products in your portfolio that’ll allow you to increase sales and margins on your site. 

Findologic can support retailers in the merchandising of their products on their website, through Findologic’s backend merchandising features and our Business Reviews. 

Our experts can identify gaps in merchant’s strategies for merchandising their products, and suggest simple fixes that will improve conversion rates. 

Why is it important to automate merchandising?

Automating merchandising gives you the opportunity to merchandise your product discovery engine in any way that you please. A flexible backend allows you to create merchandising that best suits your business. 

Working with Findologic can allow you to understand if you’re losing valuable time and money, and having this outside perspective to leverage is important in the optimisation of the whole on site UX.

What features should you look for?

The best merchandising solutions give you full control over your merchandising, and a comprehensive set of features that drive insights, link trends, and deliver results inline with your unique business requirements – all controlled from your backend. 

 

Promotions

Promotions allow you to implement temporary campaigns across your website, on desktop and mobile to support promotions. Offers and promotions give increased exposure to products that are relevant to your customer. 

You can also place banners for relevant search terms in the autocomplete or other pages throughout navigation and benefit from full exposure throughout the customer journey. Promotions benefit retailers by making your shoppers aware of the right promotions at the right time in order to support business goals.

 

Search concepts

Predefined rules and search logics allow you to produce optimal results that convert, regardless of how broad the query was or how comprehensive of a product range you have. 

With merchandising tools, you’re able to make sense of your search queries and product feeds so you can get your shopper from A to B effectively.

You’re also able to enhance the search experience by giving your shoppers real-time, relevant results.

Product Placements

Automated merchandising allows you to benefit from product placements allow you to link specific products to key search queries. You’re able to guarantee prime position to key products if a shopper submits a related query. 

This helps you to get your shoppers to the products they want without frustration, with effective product discoverability. 

Product Bury-and-Boost

With searchandising, you can take control of your results listings and augment product hierarchies to present shoppers with valuable recommendations, or prioritise product groups in line with your business goals.

This allows you to easily fine-tune and visualize results pages to support strategic goals.

Your shopper also gets greater visibility of groups that appeal to the retailer. More info on this in our other blog post on searchandising!

Landing Pages

Search is at the epicenter for discovery. Incorporate a variety of content into your search function. Our algorithm doesn’t just search product listings, also content that isn’t included in your product feed, for example return policies.

This boosts visibility across all your content, and also makes it easier for your shoppers to discover it, reducing touchpoints thanks to direct navigation.

 

Campaigns

Automated merchandising also supports campaigns by giving you a holistic view of all their activities, allowing for simple and effective planning, implementation, and monitoring throughout the campaign’s lifecycle.

This allows you to easily fine-tune and visualies results pages to support strategy-wide goals. Your shoppers get greater visibility of specific product groups that are both relevant and that benefit your strategy. 

 

KPI tracking made simple

Measure success and derive insights via 360 degree analytics. With our Google Analytics integration, you can keep track of performance and make informed decisions based on a comprehensive set of data

 

Final thoughts

Merchandising doesn’t have to be a long and arduous process. Thanks to today’s ecommerce technology, retailers can leverage the power of automation to get all the benefits of advanced merchandising.

To learn more about merchandising with Findologic, get in touch today!

Harness the power of merchandising to increase product visibility and support business strategy.

Optimise your results pages. Control the hierarchy of particular products via our user-friendly backend in line with your business goals.

Composable, Headless, Monolithic – why buzzwords don’t matter for Calumet Photography

Composable, Headless, Monolithic – why buzzwords don’t matter for Calumet Photography

Last month, we attended the leading customer experience conference in Europe, CX1 World. 

There was a lot to be learned and we even had the pleasure of hosting a masterclass. We talked all about the blurry world of buzzwords in the industry and why there’s just one recipe for success. And, we invited Oliver Breitfeld, Chief Customer Officer at Calumet Photography to talk about their secret ingredient.  

In case you missed it, read this blog to learn more.

During the masterclass, we discussed five key topics relevant to Calumet’s success story.

But before we go into that, let’s talk about Calumet for a moment.

Who are Calumet Photography?

Calumet is Germany’s biggest photo and video retailer, part of the European Imaging Group, and has more than 200 employees in Germany. Today, there are 10 stores across the country. 

Calumet is an omnichannel retailer that has some of the most experienced consultants, which has been of huge benefit in terms of customer relations. People are buying not only from online but also offline thanks to their relationships with the consultants within those stores. 

“We’re not just selling one product. We’re building lasting relationships”, says Oliver.

There are many use cases for Calumet, whether you’re an amateur photographer or a professional. Calumet’s approach is not just about selling a product, but also relationships and providing services. You can rent equipment, get repairs, sell, exchange, which allows the brand to provide a 360 degree service offering for the customer. 

Perhaps most powerful is the business’s arsenal of experienced consultants and advisors who can help customers find the exact product they’re after in a rather complex catalogue. This is helping them stay ahead of the curve.

Relationship

Before they revitalised their online store, Calumet gathered deep insights into their users. They found that users truly valued the relationship with the in-store staff – not just the products they purchased. Customers really engaged with the newsletter for its information and not necessarily just its product pushing. 

“Calumet’s philosophy is about empowering the world of image makers, and helping them make pictures perfect. This means helping them find the right equipment, helping them understand how to use the equipment, and helping them just to talk about their hobby – which is really much more than just a hobby.”

Webshop

Calumet has been online for almost 10 years. However, it hasn’t always been plain sailing. 

There used to be an old intershop monolithic shop system that was heavily customised that hadn’t been updated in 8-9 years. It involved a lot of coding and customisation, which meant a lot of knowledge pending on one person. This was very tough for them to manage.

“The online business is important because customers are researching online – whether it’s looking into specifications, lenses, etc. Having an online store allows the customer to be informed about the subject. Hence the decision to replatform.”, explains Oliver

During the 12-16 month replatforming, Calumet left their PIM System, the middleware, and shop system, replatforming to Shopware 6 with a headless approach. 

It was important for Calumet to have a proper IT setup in place that a small team could manage. 

The photography sector

People are passionate about the products they have and the results they produce with those products. It’s more than a hobby to them. They want to talk about how they did it, most of the known photographers host training sessions where you can book a tour and go on a weekend trip with them. 

Everyone is really involved and passionate about what they’re doing. They’re willing to create a community and share information. This underpinned their entire replatforming strategy and content-driven approach.

What are the challenges they’ve faced in the last few years?

As with most retailers, the pandemic had a significant impact on the business. Availabilit and supply chain issues caused issues, but things are recovering for the holiday season. Oliver also explained that fraud is also an issue with some taking advantage of the payment system. Also it is more difficult to consult online than in person. 

“Customer experience is something that we’re always working on to get information in place that customers need – especially those customers that purchase their first camera. This is where things like guided shopping come in and help the customer identify three things: Use case, budget, product.” 

COVID

Both in store and online were impacted by the supply chain issues since the lockdown. Still around 70% of revenue comes from the offline stores. It was difficult when the lockdown temporarily closed the offline stores. Luckily, Calumet had a good and stable online shop in place, with the infrastructure to support click and collect, consulting via telephone and video. 

Calumet fared better during the pandemic than most, thanks to its people and technology. Most of the stores had a backdoor where you could just hand out packages, which was helpful due to the reliance on the brick-and-mortar stores. Nevertheless, the online offering increased. 

Of course online, there were issues such as increased paid traffic, finding new competitors, and new entrants to the market. 

Regardless, Calumet came out of the pandemic strong, with a better understanding of the customer. This success was down largely due to the multichannel approach.

It was once the case that online was helping retail to survive. Now in a shock to the ecommerce industry, we see in some areas retail taking over or gaining some of the market shares they lost to online in the past year. In other words, retail is helping online to survive.

Online optimisations

To be blunt, Calumet threw away a lot of their old technologies in favour of a new commerce platform, for good reason. 

The replatforming itself and the ability to present content in a good way and to have personalisation on the side. 

As mentioned, Calumet uses Shopware 6, but is also working with StoryBlock as a CMS. Because of the level of complex information, they require a powerful content engine, enhancing product data with content management elements. For instance, the brand brings their product listings to life with bespoke videos like these.

More recently, Calumet looked to enhancing their search capabilities with Findologic and Trbo to have the ranking of the product pages in place as well as personalisation. 

Now the brand has a very solid foundation with the platform they have and are ready to execute on what Oliver calls “real ecommerce”, and put into place personalisations, conversion rate optimisation, content marketing, and more. 

It’s early days, but Calumet is optimistic about the journey to come.

More challenges?

When you have one system, any problems that arise will be much easier to identify. When you’re working with a lot of interfaces, it can be a lot harder to resolve issues. Oliver gives several examples:

  • A PIM sending data to the shop
  • The shop sending data back to the ERP system
  • Search – everything connected through APIs
  • Hard to find where it went wrong
  • Is your staging environment the same as your live environment
  • Is there anything that was misconfigured when testing payment

Headless is a very good way to go, but you need the people and the capabilities to have more complex testing in place and in-depth knowledge of what you’re doing and where things are going and how promotions are handled, and more. 

“The biggest challenge was for us to understand our own architecture and to help send all the feeds and everything to the right direction.”

Flexibility is also a boon – if you ever want to scale your architecture and exchange a system later and bring in for instance new emailing tools, or AI layer to your search results – flexibility is crucial. 

In Calumet’s words: what are the biggest opportunities in ecommerce 

When you are a small D2C brand, your challenges are a lot different. You’re focused on getting the first traffic in, you need to have a shop that’s working and telling your stories well. 

If you’re a huge brand, your challenges are more different – price management, cost of traffic, keeping customers happy.

For Calumet, the most important challenge is keeping your customers. Managing your customer relationships is key to customer lifetime value. The cost of acquiring new customers is going up. Most customers are not loyal, because discounts are plenty and competitors are fighting for your shoppers. 

“Our advice to retailers is you need a proper strategy for managing your customer relations and having them purchasing again and again. That might be once a year, or multiple times a year. You need a strategy to attract and keep customers.” 

When it comes to technology, you don’t need to own everything in your IT department. You need an ecommerce shop system that suits your business. There might be some B2B companies that need the whole shebang – i.e. PIM systems, search, etc. that have capabilities you might not need as a small D2C. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Learnings

When facing technology challenges, you need to have clear lines of communication in your IT department and have a strategy. In case of emergencies, you need to have a method to resolve it. If customers have an issue, it will be hard to get them back. 

Have a proper testing environment. There are many things that can go wrong when you go headless. 

The most important things are done in the frontend. It’s easy to say keep the complexities away from the user, but generally ecommerce is still a far way away from achieving this. 

Another one of Calumet’s learnings has been to focus on the interactions of the customer and make their end to end shopping experience as smooth as possible. That has been key to Calumet’s success.

I’d also like to share one useful tidbit from the masterclass.

We asked Calumet what they’d like to share with other ecommerce leaders.

“The most important thing is to network, visit conventions, attend talks, listen to what people are saying, connect with them. It’s very helpful to connect with other people doing something similar. A lot of insights came when we’d have issues during replatforming, and we spoke with other businesses facing similar struggles, and how they were dealing with them. 

Before we chose the tools and platforms we were using, we chose to get in touch with customers of the product. We didn’t just rely on case studies, we dove into social proof, and talked with the people using the tools and how the project went. For anyone owning a big project, really look to the ground and get a granular understanding to truly understand how it will impact your business.”

Conclusion

The title of the masterclass was: Composable, Headless, Monolithic, Whatever- why buzzwords don’t matter for Calumet Photography

Why?

To quote Oliver, who came up with the headline, “buzzwords don’t make money”.

People frequently say you need to own your technology, but that requires people – especially on data – and this costs money. In the world of retail this presents a huge problem because margins are shrinking. Everything in the online world is expensive – from marketing to staff. 

Buzzwords are nice to have and indicate the art of the possible, but as a retailer, you need to look at TCOs and perspective. You need to look at where you are and where you can realistically be. You need reliable partnerships and a sustainable business. That’s what you need to take care of as a retailer – not necessarily whether you have the newest technology in place.

Calumet is enjoying the best of both worlds. 

Searchandising: What is it and why is it important?

Searchandising: What is it and why is it important?

Marcel Krabath

Searchandising: What is it and why is it important?

Searchandising: What is it and why is it important?

Searchandising is more than just a buzz-word. This sophisticated strategy is being adopted by retailers across industries and it’s easy to see why. Read now to learn more.

In e-commerce we place a lot of effort in generating traffic. We spend loads of time on SEO and a lot of money on PPC campaigns. But it’s all for nought if a poor user experience just leads to bouncing and poor conversion rates. 

Being able to provide tailored search results for your shoppers is key to their engagement. Consumers expect personalisation and a smooth omnichannel experience. If they don’t get it, they won’t buy. 

‘Searchandising’ (also known as search merchandising) is a recent term that was coined largely as a result of the evolution of ecommerce search solutions. In this post we talk about what searchandising is, why it’s important, and how it can help you smash your sales targets this quarter. 

What is searchandising?

Picture this: you’re running a brick-and-mortar store and you’re trying to sell some leftover stock. You need to move it quickly and you’ve decided to discount them and move your items to the front of the shop to make them more attractive to your shoppers. This is classic merchandising. 

In the ecommerce world, online retailers take many of these same concepts and work them into their online stores. Popular examples can include sales announcements with loud banners and calls-to-action. 

It doesn’t stop there though. Search merchandising allows you to take a step further by merchandising to shoppers that are looking for a specific product or solution to their problem.  

As you can imagine, there’s quite a lot to searchandising, so let’s take a dive and try to understand it better.

Searchandising (Search merchandising) combines search and merchandising to customize your ecommerce site search results to fit a certain criteria that you set. Searchandising enables you to ensure that the results your shoppers see are highly relevant and match their intent, but that these results also align with your business goals. These might include trending products, seasonal items, related products with higher profit margins and the like.

In the world of ecommerce today, the power of search solutions is well known. Shoppers want to have natural shopping experiences, and search is key to providing them with relevant results. 

However, it’s one thing to give users search results that are relevant. It’s another to give them relevant results that you want them to buy. That’s what searchandising is all about, and it benefits both the shopper and the seller.

How does searchandising work?

At its core, searchandising is all about enhancing search capabilities, including navigation, autocomplete, recommended products, recent searches related queries, and more. With searchandising, you can layer merchandising into site search features, such as autocomplete, recent searches, search suggestions, and more.

It achieves this with behavioural data and automation to create a seamless, personalised search experience.

At the most basic level, searchandising involves setting ‘boost-and-bury’ rules on variables such as profit margins, stock availability, and more. 

On a more advanced level, it can take into account behavioural data, and use sophisticated machine learning algorithms to sort products based on relevancy, popularity, personalisation, and more. 

Searchandising allows you to quickly amend your search engine relevance to your business KPIs. It works by enforcing business rules in addition to relevance rules for the site’s search engine. This allows you to adapt to your business goals, by promoting, boosting, and burying products for key search queries.

As with all solutions, you can take it further. Advanced searchandising solutions give you access to analytics, that allow you to refine search results, understand user intent and key word data, such as underperforming and trending products. This all helps you ultimately build an experience that your users truly care about.

Not all businesses are the same and searchandising will look different in each scenario. As a search provider, we work with our clients to customise and optimise their results according to their specific criteria, and that they are easily monitored and adjusted as the system learns from shoppers. 

Search results are sorted to reflect user intent and the retailer’s business rules, be it product popularity, personal taste, time of year, campaigns, new and changing inventory, and so on. 

As well as this, related search results are generated in real-time and displayed next to search results. 

Manual merchandising tasks are automated, such as sorting, ranking, and tagging. Retailers are able to better anticipate shopper intent and minimise costs as a result. We’ve seen our customers increase their sales by as high as 20% in some cases as a result of advanced searchandising, and save incalculable time. 

Searchandising allows ecommerce teams, including product owners, marketers, merchandisers, and managers to organise search results in ways that align with business goals, such as pushing key products, tracking how people interact with your offerings, and more. Searchandising is a continually improving process that can be optimised to drive sales and meet business objectives.

What can you do with searchandising?

There are some key things you can do with searchandising, such as:

  • Personalisation: Providing personally relevant content to your users increases conversion rate
  • Search rules: Use a boost-and-bury strategy to promote certain types of products to users based on KPIs such as time of year, customer relationship, or other factors.
  • Recommend products: Take advantage of merchandising to users directly in their search experience. This provides an intuitive user experience and opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. 
  • Campaigns: You can also leverage display ads and promotional banners on your search results pages to help promote key products.
  • Monitor performance: Searchandising is a process that requires continual fine-tuning. There is no ‘set-and-forget’ option. Monitor your user interactions and decide how to adjust search relevance and product rankings accordingly. 

What are the benefits of searchandising?

There are several advantages to searchandising that you should be aware of. These include:

  • Increased revenue: showing shoppers products based on the customisable rules you set when done optimally will increase conversion and sales
  • Enhanced navigation and filters: providing a smoother experience for your shoppers
  • Display campaigns: you can promote products and content as display ads and banners on the same page or throughout your site, keeping your users engaged
  • Better product listings: searchandising allows you to optimise your product listings and maximise efficiency
  • Monitor data and improve iterations: Searchandising gives you a greater understanding of your shoppers. This data will empower you to make adjustments to search relevance and product offerings you have on your site, as well as managing your inventory and supply chain processes.
    • Understand your priorities and strategies: This means knowing your goals which will allow you to align your search results with the kpis that matter most to your business
    • Defining merchandising criteria: Where you decide which results will be highlighted when a search is completed. Data points such as number of sales, product cost, events, profit-margin, CTRs, discounts, stock, and more will be considered and incorporated in the algorithm.
  • Monitoring performance: When the algorithms are defined and integrated into your store, you can monitor performance, looking at areas for improvement. 

Of course it’s not all clear skies and there is no ‘set it and forget it’ approach to searchandising. The best on site solutions learn and apply what they’ve discerned about your shoppers and make continual improvements. 

What do good searchandising tools look like?

To understand what makes a searchandising platform worth your time and money, let’s look at four key areas:

  • Search relevance
  • Personalisation
  • KPIs for search results 
  • Automation and machine learning

Search Relevance

The ability to match results that are relevant to the user’s intent is pivotal to success. Merchandising means nothing without it. There’s no point trying to push products that aren’t relevant to the shopper’s search, and will just frustrate them.

The best search solutions are built with user intent at their core, and use it to their advantage in search merchandising. For example, if I search for a red dress, I don’t want to see red shirts or dresses of a different colour. Or if I’m looking for an oak coffee table, I don’t want to be shown marble or dining tables.

Today’s site search engines use natural language processing (or NLP) to analyse the search, discern intent, and retrieve the results it thinks the shopper wants. They are much more sophisticated than they used to be and are more focused on honing in on results with greater focus and more precise targeting. NLP is key to that.

Personalisation

Relevant results are the most important part of site search, but by combining it with personalisation, you can expect even better results from your searchandising. 

Personalisation leverages historical user behaviour and brings your searchandising strategy to the next level. To give an example, a customer enters your store looking for an LED TV. Why then would you show them LCD TVs? Smart searchandising solutions will automatically retrieve all this data and display properly merchandised search results. 

Another example would be location-based merchandising. Geography-based merchandising can also support your omnichannel commerce strategy by boosting goods nearest to the physical store location. For instance, say you’ve got a particular product that perfectly matches the shopper’s search intent, and it’s available in a store near them for collection. Searchandising can achieve this.

KPIs for search results

To get the most out of searchandising, you should fine-tune your site search in a way that it understands your merchandising strategy. Of course, this requires input from you. 

These KPIS vary from business to business and you’ll have to work with your vendor to determine the right formula and application of  business rules for the right searchandising. 

Let’s look at several examples.

If you were to launch your ecommerce search solution and have it focus on product profit margins at the exclusion

In short, these rules encompass all of the variables that could affect the ranking of your search results, including things such as profit margin, product availability, discounts, free delivery and shipping options, product release date, and so on.

Automation and machine learning

Searchandising leverages automation to move beyond manual and labour-intense on-site search merchandising towards a solution that continually self-optimises. Search results rank themselves in real-time to reflect new information, including:

  • Relationship and similarities between products 
  • Business rules and logics, like new products, stock levels, seasonal events, etc.
  • CRM (past purchases, user profile info, etc)
  • Behaviour data, such as clicks, adds-to-cart, purchases, etc.
  • Particular words and synonyms

Could search merchandising work for you?

Ask yourself some key questions:

  • Do you know why your products are ranked in a particular way for a certain search?
  • Are you able to change your rankings flexibly?
  • Do you struggle to understand data on search-specific results to make decisions and changes?

If your answer is no for one or more of these questions, it might be time to consider investing in searchandising. 

With a search merchandising solution, business owners and marketers can take ownership over search, finetune their relevance, test changes, run A/B tests, and more to boost conversion rate and sales. 

If you think about it, online merchandising has greater potential than merchandising in a brick-and-mortar store. With a searchandising tool, you have the ability to merchandise products in the tens of thousands rather than just the ten you might manage in a physical aisle, leading to greater potential profits and a better user experience.

Searchandising sounds tough but it doesn’t have to be. In fact search solutions such as Findologic are robust but built with simplicity in mind. Non-technical users are able to quickly make adjustments and test them to find out what works and stay flexible. 

Adopting searchandising into your ecommerce strategy will increase your chances of conversion, grow your profit margins, move inventory, and create an excellent shopping experience. 

Of course, searchandising is but one of many ecommerce site search best practices you can implement. If you want to learn improvements you can make to your search offering and get the most out of merchandising online, why not get in touch with Findologic today?

 

What is Composable Commerce and Why is it important?

What is Composable Commerce and Why is it important?

Marcel Krabath

What is Composable Commerce and Why is it important?

What is Composable Commerce and why is it important? 

This is your guide to a harmonious commerce experience.

No single vendor can offer a comprehensive one-size-fits all solution for your ecommerce site.

Building an ecosystem of best-of-breed ecommerce platforms is key for any online retailer that wants to smash their targets. 

Leveraging APIs to improve the transfer of data between the front and back end gives retailers more flexibility to create unique experiences for their customers. 

It’s not easy however. Creating a complex ecosystem with third-party providers that work in harmony with one another is a challenge. You have to think about supply chains, checkout, and the on site experience just to name a few. All within budget, in line with goals, and optimisation. 

However, it is the aim of this blog to talk a little bit more about composable commerce, what it is, and how you can strive to build a smart ecosystem 

In this article, we’ll look at the top four technologies that make the blueprint for composable commerce, that you absolutely should consider deploying high performance APIs to supercharge success, including:

  • How to leverage APIs end-to-end and offer an unbeatable customer experience
  • The top four API technologies you should consider to optimise end-to-end operations
  • How to utilise these technologies as part of a connected tech stack

But before that, let’s talk about composable commerce and what it is.

What is Composable Commerce?

Composable Commerce simply refers to integrating multiple ‘best-of-breed’ commerce solutions, as opposed to opting for a one-size-fits-all solution.

To give some examples, a retailer might opt for bespoke solutions for shipping, payments, product discovery, marketing, and more, that are ‘composed’ and integrated with one another to create an excellent shopping experience for the consumer.

How does it work? Rather than one-size-fits-all solutions, composable commerce leverages modern technologies and approaches such as MACH (Micorservices, API, Cloud, Headless), and JAMstack (Javascript, APIs, and Markup) to meet the needs of the market.

The fundamentals of Composable Commerce involve:

Centralisation of business gives retailers flexibility and allows them to make changes business models and create unique experiences without heavily relying on IT. 

Modular architecture supports organisational agility and allows for faster delivery, time to market, and improved experiences.

Open ecosystem allows retailers to benefit from third party applications, pre-composed solutions and best practices.  

Composble commerce involves a packaged approach to business solutions that aim towards future-proofing digital commerce. It achieves this by ‘composing’ packaged business capabilities (PBCs)

How is Composable Commerce Changing Commerce Experiences? 

In composable commerce, best-in-class technologies from a variety of vendors provide an excellent experience for the consumer.

A typical composable commerce stack might include services covering various capabilities such as Shopware for commerce, Huboo for shipping, Findologic for product discovery and search services, or checkout for – you guessed it – checkout!

 

What are the benefits of composable commerce?

Composable commerce has several benefits, including:

  • The ability to enable commerce experiences on any touchpoint
  • The ability to deliver highly differentiated commerce experiences to engage customers with your brand and products
  • Enabling highly personalised marketing automated campaigns, or commerce experiences with complex business requirements. 
  • Staying ahead of the competition with flexibility and speed needed to rapidly adjust to consumer or market demands.

From an IT perspective, composable commerce benefits include:

  • API-first headless structure without complexity and risk of being tied with a specific vendor, allowing for components to be adjusted as and when required
  • Responding quickly to changing business requirements
  • Increased efficiency and reduced maintenance costs

Now that we know more about composable commerce and its benefits, let’s break down how you might implement composable commerce by prioritising four different areas in your ecommerce experience:

  • Headless
  • Product Discovery and Search
  • Checkout
  • Shipping

Composable commerce visual

Leveraging headless systems

To start, let’s look at headless and what it means.

What is headless? Headless software can function with no graphical interface. Now, this might sound contradictory since computers are built by and for humans, and every computer has an interface, right? 

Of course, there is an admin interface at some point. But the core purpose of headless software is not the lack of a human-usable interface but the presence of a program-usable interface that taps into the functionalities of other software systems. 

Headless is developed API-first, meaning each system feature is first made available via an API. This means that it is capable of transferring data back and forth between a range of softwares without roadblocks.

 

Let’s look at an example to show the power of combining headless services: 

 

Traditionally, a web shop would be integrated with an ERP system, a payment provider, and a shipping provider. If you decouple this scenario into a composition of headless systems, each integration becomes independent from one another and ultimately more flexible as the web shop would be part of a wider network and can be adapted in isolation, rather than being part of the monolithic centre piece. 

Or perhaps a shop provides the basic logic for the basket, catalogue, and similar functionalities. The front-end is a PWA, but there’s also an integration with social media, marketplaces, and a POS system. Since the shop is headless, the interface is no longer tied to its codebase and is interchangeable

With the world becoming more integrated and interconnected every day, providing a headless solution is an important survival strategy for service providers.

At the same time, others providing their services as a headless solution is a prerequisite for success as a global community. Running a siloed, monolithic product is a surefire way to fall behind the competition.

Traditional vs Headless CMS

 

Prioritising Deployment

So, which areas should be optimised through an API integration first? Before answering this question, you need to have a future-proof API. That means you have to think about versioning and access control first. You don’t want systems using your API to break when deploying new versions or changing functionalities. 

Once this has been taken care of, you can focus on prioritising deployments. This depends heavily on the kind of retailer you are, but generally speaking, identify the most easily transferable areas to API access as well as which will have the biggest impact on your customers and prioritise these. 

Vendors are full of promises, including seamless integration and connectivity within existing tech stacks, but the reality is that usually, some unforeseen obstacles arise when integrating with a new technology, for example, swapping out the built-in product recommendations with a cloud service. 

So take a look at your business case, look for low-risk-high-reward areas, and start there. Once you have gained some experience, you can fully transition into the sector of modular, high-performance headless networks. 

 

Robust Headless Ecosystems for End-to End Optimisations 

 

Customers want consistency. 

They want to discover products, have a pain free checkout and reliable delivery. A great experience isn’t confined to the onsite intricacies but the end-to-end journey. 

The web shop is just the interface where all of this happens when your architecture is composed of headless services, you can get closer to your customer by leveraging gold-standard technologies. 

When decomposing your business logic into small, orchestrated parts, you can also re-think the customer journey, creating new touchpoints and optimising them depending on the scenario. 

Most businesses today have a fixed set of possibilities as they’re limited by their monolithic setup. After transitioning to being a modular, orchestrated system, you’ll be able to configure optimisations far more dynamically.

Each headless service you use is a company that specialises in one specific part of the customer journey and has more data, more resources, and more niche experience than retailers have internally. 

Let’s go back to the example of product recommendations in a web shop. A traditional shop knows its customers, what they bought, and the product catalogue. Using a recommendation service means the customer’s behaviour is matched to thousands of similar customers, with data from years before. 

This information is used to display recommendations that increase the chance of conversion. Because the service has such an expansive data set, it knows the customer better than an on-premise system ever could.

The same situation happens when thinking of a divided customer base. Let’s assume you are selling to customers in the B2B. space It’s the same product catalogue in the background but of course, with different demands to B2C. 

With an orchestrated, service-based system, you can swap out and tie different services together for each scenario. There are no design constraints and no need to build a new front-end presentation for each scenario from scratch.

Even though many retailers are transitioning to headless services, this advantage doesn’t fade away. With the opportunity to fine-tune and optimise the customer journey quickly, retailers have the tools to create supercharged experiences, rather than trying to move inside the constraints of a static system. 

Something online retailers need to keep in mind is that they will need a platform that ties all of their technologies together and leverages core functionalities such as a composer, that keeps all services in sync. 

When looking further into the customer journey, there will be a number of areas that can be optimised through technology partnerships so it is essential to work with a platform which can successfully support multiple integrations as a connected and harmonic ecosystem. 

Previously we touched upon prioritising the areas that will have the greatest impact, but are the simplest to integrate with. Three tried and tested solutions that fit this description and form a robust basis for any retailer looking to drive end-to-end optimisations include:

  • Product Discovery
  • Checkout
  • Fulfilment

To better. ourunderstanding of composable commerce, let’s look at the next piece of the puzzle – ecommerce site search.

Ecommerce Site Search and Product Discovery

Non-existent, outdated or underperforming tech stacks or solutions directly affect sales and loyalty. 

Yet during search usability testing, 19 of the world’s leading e-commerce sites’ search support was so weak that 31% of all product finding tasks ended in vain. 

All too often we see established brands relying on their strong acquisition strategies and brand name, but this complacency is costing them. 

Products often overwhelm online shoppers. If they struggle to find their desired products, shoppers will abandon their search and your chances of conversion are ruined. 

Product discovery is at the epicentre of a shoppers path to purchase. Connecting your shoppers with the products they want and ensuring a seamless journey has its benefits including: 

  • Increased conversion
  • Increased order value
  • Reduced touchpoints
  • Decrease bounce rates
  • Improve retention and loyalty
  • Enhance brand perception

If a shopper can’t find it, they can’t buy it By deploying a range of features that are engaged from the very first interaction with the search bar, through navigation and refinement, and on to the product pages, retailers are able to benefit from: 

Search Logic – Employ various search logics such as synonym and typo management to avoid dead-ends and ensure accurate results 

First Click Interaction Display products, recommendations and adverts from the very first interaction with the search bar 

A.I. Driven Capabilities – Deploy A.I. to understand user intent and relieve navigational burden to deliver relevant products 

Personalisation – Personalise recommendations and results 

Merchandising – Utilise merchandising and adverts to increase product visibility and modify hierarchs in line with business goals 

Filters and Guides – Configure relevant filters or guided shopping for intentional refinement 

Mobile UX – Ensure a mobile-friendly interface that supports the contrasting flow states

 

Ecommerce site search mapping 

Use Cases 

If you leverage your analytics, you’ll be able to identify high severity pain points and trends within product discovery that are impacting conversion. The most common issues product discovery can resolve include: 

1. Short Tail Searches 

Almost 60% of search queries are vague and consist of 1 or 2 words. So, if a shopper searches for ‘green dress’ for example, there is likely to be a high volume of very generic results in line with the generic search term.

By effectively integrating specific features into search and navigation retailers are able to alleviate shoppers of burden. 

Rather than search for what may feel like a needle in a haystack, by using a combination of features (which we will detail later on in this report), retailers are able to drill down into the products that visitors actually want to purchase. 

There are several ways that by integrating with product discovery, retailers are able to derive value from short tail searches and make the lives of their customers easier. 

By employing A.I. that drills down into user data, retailers are able to relieve shoppers of navigational burden. This is because the A.I. is able to understand user intent by gathering session data and presenting shoppers with products that correlate to this. 

Another way e-com teams can ensure more intentional results when search terms are vague is by offering relevant and intuitive refinement options by configuring results specific to the search.

If we take a look at lingerie retailer, Pour Moi, we can see that they have implemented both A.I. and relevant navigational capabilities which make sense of vague search terms. By connecting users with relevant products that they are more likely to buy, they saw an 11% increase in conversion and a 10% increase in average order value.

 

2. A high volume of clicks and/or eventual abandonment 

The logic that underpins search is often weak, meaning that shoppers have a hard time sourcing what they’re looking for and are forced to either jump around from page to page, or in the worst cases, abandon their search altogether. The frustration involved in the overall product search experience can lead to a 68% abandonment rate according to Forrester.

Your online store should be consistently working behind the scenes in order to avoid pain points. Common issues include not correcting typos made by the shopper or not recognising a synonym. 

Regardless of the search query, as a retailer, it is your responsibility to always provide a next step within the customer journey.

So, for example, if a user searches for a ‘blow dryer’ instead of a ‘hair dryer’, you’re still able to return results or recommendations that ultimately lead to a purchase. This is a simple fix that can be achieved using a product discovery platform.

Continuously collecting search data and harnessing this to update your typo or synonym library avoids on-site error. 

With intelligent logic working in the background, Kitlocker.com saw a 12% decrease in exit rate as a result of reduced navigation frustration.

 

3. Mobile UX 

If you delve into your conversion rates, you’ll likely notice that desktop trumps mobile. On average, desktop conversion is 3.9% – more than double the 1.8% average rate for smartphones, despite m-commerce contributing to one-third of all e-commerce shopping in the UK. 

The primary reason for this is that retailers replicate the desktop experience on mobile. And with a screen a fraction of the size, product discovery becomes cumbersome, with the inherent tension between elements. 

The first step is to simplify the entire interface to ensure that navigation is straightforward. Hiding out of use elements and focussing on integral touchpoints such as a minimalist assisted suggest with intelligent recommendations. 

Further features such as ever-present filters remain visible when you scroll or filter overlays that are collapsible ensure no distractions from the core purpose when not in use all contribute towards a pain-free mobile experience. 

In essence, deploying instinctive touchpoints is the key to success. In fact, replicating the familiar interface used by Google, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter creates a more subconscious experience. 

By deploying this, retailers are able to minimise discrepancies between the channels users interact with every day and create a more unconscious path to purchase.

In A/B testing Equip4work saw a 17% increase in conversion on mobile as well as a 5.7% increase in average order value and a 9% increase in returning customers through touchpoint optimisation when the aforementioned features were implemented.

 

Getting the Ball Rolling with APIs

As a retailer looking to upgrade their tech stack it is important that various technologies support one another and any new additions to not interfere with your existing ecosystem. 

APIs allow retailers to plugin to white-glove experiences like product discovery, while maintaining full control. Integrating a new API inline with your existing stack means that you can customise and control the integration to ensure it fits seamlessly. In addition, rather than processing data in one continuous flow between, with multiple roadblocks along the way, 

Findologic’s various APIs including Autocomplete, Search & Navigation JSON Response and A.I. Assistant will feed directly into other technologies.

 

Checkout 

How to leverage payments as part of your best-of-breed technology stack

The e-commerce sector is economically healthy and increasingly fit for the future. While consumers turned their spending power to digital in droves, e-commerce retailers were spurred to act.

Checkout

As more commerce shifts online, customers are expecting a seamless online experience throughout the entire interaction with your store – from finding the right products, engaging with customer support or being able to pay with their favourite payment method online.

But demand is a double-edged sword. New entrants are attracted to the market, which means increased competition. Even an established presence cannot be guaranteed forever, leaving no room for complacency. Around 80% of ecommerce merchants close their virtual doors for good each year. So, how do you make sure you are not one of them? 

Success or failure is dependent on many factors. Some, like price, quality, brand kudos, and the shopping experience are well known, and well resourced. Less understood is the importance of payments.

But businesses are increasingly turning their attention to the fact that a superior payment operation will be the way to secure ongoing growth. 

Here we look at how optimal checkout is fundamental to composable commerce, and how ecommerce merchants can optimise it to unlock growth.

Prioritising Payment Methods

Today’s digital shoppers expect to pay in the way they want; and might go somewhere else if they can’t; 56% of consumers say they have been permanently put off returning to a site because their preferred payment method was not available. 

But how do you know what the right payment method is? It largely depends where you are. Cards dominate e-commerce in the U.S, accounting for 75% of transactions; but in Germany, this is less than a quarter. Head to Asia and digital wallets are popular, leading the way in China, Indonesia and Thailand. It also depends who you’re selling to, with preferences varying by age and gender.

Make Payments easy

Today’s online shoppers are looking for a seamless experience. 52% of consumers say they have been permanently put off an e-commerce site by a complex checkout. One option to make it easier for them are prepopulated forms. These save a customer from inputting all their details again, while saved payment details further reduce the effort. 

Even better is to make sure that the checkout page resonates with your customers. Serving up a payment page in the wrong language or with the wrong currency is a pretty safe way of disappointing them. For example, 76% of Japanese consumers say they would not buy from a website that was not fully in Japanese throughout the payment experience. 

But local sensitivities are not the only concern. A payment page that looks completely different from the site you are buying from is jarring. So too one that is not optimised for the customer’s device. Any of these factors can be enough to turn them away

Improve authorization rates

Few things frustrate an online shopper more than having their payment declined when there is no good reason. In APAC, 21% of people say they would not try to buy a product again after a false decline. Worse still, 37% would go to a competitor instead. 

Meanwhile, in the U.S, U.K, Germany and France, e-commerce merchants lost $20 billion in sales in 2019 because of payments that should never have been rejected. Of this, $13 billion went to competitors. Higher security standards mean not 100% of this loss can be mitigated. But a significant amount of revenue could be salvaged by optimising authorisation rates. Merchants, however, need to have access to data in order to understand why payments are failing and make these insights.

Enter markets the right way: with data

With some things, merchants can ‘copy and paste’ their way into new markets. Other aspects, like payments, need a more nuanced approach. If you’re unable to navigate the local ecosystem and forge powerful partnerships, having the best product at the best price won’t matter. 

You will also need to analyse your customer’s payment behaviour in a granular way so that you can have intimate localised knowledge of their payments behavior. This can help inform everything from your pricing strategy, the payment methods you promote in specific markets and managing fraud and chargebacks.

From financial afterthought to driver of growth

Although payments may have been seen as an operational cost centre, a good payments strategy is increasingly being used as a lever of growth. And competitive advantages can be won or lost with payments. 

But therein lies the challenge for merchants. Where to start? Even if the appetite is there, few businesses have the internal resources to get to grips with these opportunities. The answer is to leave it to someone who knows how. If you have a clear idea of what you need going forward with your business, you will know what to look for in a partner that can transform payments from financial afterthought to driver of growth.

Checkout.com is a global payment solutions provider that helps leading brands drive more value from their digital payments. Purpose-built with performance, scalability and speed in mind, our modular payments platform is ideal for retail merchants looking to seamlessly integrate better payment solutions.

Supply Chain Management

It’s been almost impossible to miss the coverage of global supply chain pressures over the past few months. Displaced shipping containers, rising shipping costs, a shortage of drivers and packed warehouses have all contributed to what has been described as the ‘perfect storm’, especially prevalent during the sustained peak demand season. 

Supply chain management

Combine this with consumer expectations for expedited shipping options and optimising your supply chain to both mitigate pressures and deliver on your promises to customers firmly comes into focus and you’re presented with a challenge. 

Optimising your supply chain can take various forms. Taking a holistic approach to your complete supply chain will help you make marginal and impactful gains. 

Firstly, API-enabled integrations between online sales platforms and inventory management systems (IMS) creates fast flow early-stage order management. Real-time inventory management means that you’ll have instant visibility of stock levels across your full product range and marketplace suite so that you know exactly which products to replenish and the volume to which to do so.

This data also enables forward planning of inventory management so that you can be ahead of the curve for higher demand periods especially against the backdrop of logistical pressures.

Technology can also power clever geolocating of stock for efficient on-time delivery. By storing products across multiple fulfilment centres in various regions you can circumnavigate potential delays at borders and customs, and also lower the delivery cost to your customer resulting in more transactions.

Limiting friction between purchase and delivery where possible can help win new customers and ensure repeated custom. A well-oiled warehouse management system (WMS) can prove pivotal to success.

Then there’s physically getting your products in the hands of your customers. A full-stack supply chain solution increases your access to a global carrier network and broadens your last mile delivery choices.

Your choices will be dictated by what’s important to you and your customers. Whether that is speed, reliability, or eco-friendly options like EV fleets, access to a global carrier network via an integrated software platform gives you the best chance of meeting requirements with solutions.

 

Talking Technologies 

Full-stack fulfilment solutions help connect all the supply chain dots. A fully optimised supply chain is reliant on technologies talking to each other throughout the end-to-end journey. 

Full flow comes primarily from API enablement. Integrations between online stores & marketplaces and software driven fulfilment can happen fast and seamlessly to connect product listings, stock levels and locations straight into the order fulfilment process. 

This saves valuable time, creating efficiencies and happens behind the scenes without much in the way of human intervention. 

A full-stack fulfilment solution also talks to technologies powering last mile, making decisions based on logic to automatically select the best courier based on preferred delivery options and price points. 

Tech-driven supply chain optimisation sits right at the core of the wider ecommerce tech stack. Getting it right can affect real positive change in your e-commerce proposition, so look for a solution that connects the right channels with the right systems and carriers to increase your customer reach without the growing pains.

 

Who can benefit from supply chain optimisation? 

In short, all retailers can benefit from supply chain optimisation. The question for retailers is: what areas are your priorities for optimisation? Knowing this will help calibrate your focus on where technology can supercharge your performance and make the biggest impact. 

As an example, our friends at Huboo have been working with a client that supplies Covid test kits. They were experiencing a number of challenges in the supply chain, starting with the rapid scaling and spikey nature of demand, and the complex nature of their picking, packing, posting and returns process. 

Powered by Huboo’s full-stack fulfilment technology, they were able to connect their online store in minutes, ship in large volumes of kits at pace, work with a provider adept at complex fulfilment solutions and effectively handover the whole order process end-to-end through one platform.

This enabled rapid and sustained growth in fulfilled test kit orders, overcoming their challenges and ensuring a quick turnaround in test results.

 

What are the benefits? 

Retailers can reap many benefits from an optimised supply chain solution, but predominantly and frequently the main success metric is streamlining. Slickening the end-to-end through technology reduces manual task management, enhances forward-planning through better visibility, and increases customer delight and drives repeat business through a delivery framework that meets increasing customer expectations. 

These benefits have a two-fold impact on commercial performance. Growing the top line through repeat business and a better chance of referrals from your customer base, and protecting margins to help the bottom line with greater efficiencies driven through automation and effective planning. 

Reducing overheads and ongoing costs through a technology-driven approach means you can also allocate, should you choose to, more resources to growth and performance marketing channels to acquire new business. 

This streamlining can also result in an uplift in another significant component, time. Retailers from the small & mighty right the way through to your established enterprises can benefit from the time given back so that they can focus on the areas of the business that are growth enablers.

And to further propel growth, a winning global supply chain solution can position your brand into new territories quickly and impactfully without high associated activation and ongoing costs.

 

Final thoughts

So there you have it. A not-so-short guide on composable commerce and what we believe are the top three kinds of technologies that merchants should consider if they want to supercharge success. 

This might look deeply intricate and complicated, but when you break it down, you’re just looking at plugging API solutions that work harmoniously together to give you and your customers the very best result. 

To reiterate: composable commerce is increasingly popular and whether retailers know about the buzzword or not, they’re doing it. One-size-fits-all solutions are simply not adequate in keeping up with the demands of consumers and the challenges in. theglobal economy. That’s our position, anyway.

If you want to learn more about building a composable commerce ecosystem, and how you can convert your traffic into sales then be sure to speak with us today!

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