AI for Retail: How Google Cloud’s New Tool Will Improve Online Customer Experience

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Over the past few months, SEO professionals have been trying to understand the implications of the massive arrival of AI tools, such as AI-powered writing assistants (e.g. Lex and ChatGPT ), and how this will affect their lives. They need to rethink strategies, taking into account all these advantages of AI tools, but ensuring that humanized experiences prevail.

And as if this weren't enough to worry about, there's why choose our service more: Google Cloud has just launched new functionalities also based on AI and machine learning as facilitators of retail websites.

This feature package is called “ Discovery AI for retail ” and is designed to help e-commerce sites offer a more personalized experience in Google search results and recommendations within their properties. These solutions have the main objectives of reducing search abandonment, improving the shopping experience and increasing conversion.

I want you to notice that I mentioned “within their properties.” That’s right. I’m not talking about SERP results, but literally the browsing experience that can be offered within the e-commerce sites themselves.

How is that going to work? Well, let me explain everything you need to know.

Improved shopping experience
Google Cloud announced the launch of these features on January 13, highlighting that this set of solutions provides a significant improvement in the shopping experience through features such as:

Image attributes that will help find products.
Understanding user behavior through previous browsing experiences.
A very potential scenario is that consumers can find more personalized product lists, more identified with their real expectations, instead of what we usually see today: product lists classified in a way that is much more focused on the needs of the business, with highlights such as “best sellers” or product collections based on seasonality, seasonal changes, etc. Something that does not always represent what the user wants to buy.

Product recommendations will also be presented in a more dynamic way, which can be much more efficient and, as a result, increase sales opportunities. Take Macy's, which is already using the solution and offering more individualized experiences to its customers in its online store.


Macy's Delivers a Personalized Shopping Experience with Google Cloud Discovery Solutions (Source: Google Cloud YouTube Channel )
I also think we can expect better results for long-tail searches because they can now be better understood by AI. Until recently, when we searched for a specific product, these sites generated few results.

AI-based inventory control
Another huge thing that Google Cloud is including in its AI offerings is “shelf control.”

On Friday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted that one of these new AI-powered features also “uses machine learning models to identify billions of products based on visual and text features, helping retailers check their stock on store shelves.”

On the same day, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal , Google Cloud said that this feature should be available in the coming months. Reinforcing Pichai's post, he also said that the algorithm will be able to detect and verify the availability of packaged products still on the shelves through images captured by cameras installed in physical warehouses.

This would solve a current problem for retailers who currently have to do this control manually with little security in availability updates, which are not always done in real time.