SEARCH

HEART OF  ECOMMERCE
Leveraging technology to transform search

What is the first thing you do when you think of buying any product? Go online and SEARCH.

Search is at the heart of eCommerce. With over a 110,000 eCommerce sites vying for attention, search has become the dealmaker that could convert a casual browser into a paying customer. Consider this:

·      4 in 10 purchases are made using only an online channel for searching and buying

·      88% of users use webrooming to find best price

·      On average, millennials now make 54% of purchase online (versus 49% of non-millennials)

·      Multi-channel shoppers spend 3 times more than single-channel shoppers

Walmart Retail Ecosystem

Over the past two years sales of Walmart U.S. eCommerce has nearly doubled. In tandem, search query volume is exponentially increasing every passing year while the queries themselves are getting longer and mimicking natural language. In FY19 there were a total of 6.4 billion total queries of which 265 million were unique queries. Given this, it has become crucial that we optimize search with emphasis on omnichannel experience (integrating retail stores and eCommerce) integrating services such as "Walmart Pickup," "Pickup Today", "Grocery Pickup", etc.

Cool Tech@ Walmart spoke with Ramanathan Ganapathy, Director, Search to find out what is Walmart doing differently in the land of search to optimize the customer experience.

When did Walmart commence its journey to leverage search?

We know that search is integral to eCommerce and recognizing this we have rightfully placed search at the center of the virtual customer’s journey. From 2015 when teams were looking to optimize text-based search to now, the journey of search at Walmart has evolved with changing customer needs. Today search is all about understanding the intent of the customer, matching needs and inspiring decisions.

For us, the platform is not restricted to searchability of products alone, but it is about knowing our customers intimately, understanding their needs and providing a superior, personalised shopping experience. We would like to predict the customer’s next purchase as he starts exploring our website and app for products.

What were the challenges you have faced during this process?

Our philosophy is to make any product available to the customer, but we faced challenges such as product discoverability. With the plethora of products available on Walmart.com, not all the products available are immediately showcased to the customer, what is known as a ‘cold start’ and only those categories of products are displayed that the customer shows interest in. If we are better able to understand the customer’s intent then the search can lead to a better product discoverability from our catalog and even a personalised basket.

Are you exclusively working on Search?

Search is so vast that we have a strong collaborative approach to strengthen this feature. When we initially started search (at IDC), we were just 20 people but today we are a 100-strong team. And while we work closely with retail graph, WMG and catalog the search universe at Walmart involves all the key locations.

What’s next for Search?

We are in the middle of a transformational / pivotal approach in search by putting customer and a seamless discoverability experience at the center of the business growth. We want to accelerate on building knowledge about our customers and take the ‘we know our customer’ to a new level. We are doubling down on the search relevance improvement across critical verticals like Entertainment, Enthusiasts and professional etc. In addition, working closely with the retail graph team to enable semantic search and doubling on our efforts to accelerate learning experimentation velocity and enhancing our tools for search quality measurements.