Introduction

Ambiendo, a fast-growing ecommerce retailer, sought to enhance its online shopping experience by providing more personalized and intuitive product discovery. Their new Shopify setup lacked the advanced capabilities needed to offer tailored search results, dynamic recommendations, and efficient management of product variants and backordered items out of the box. This resulted in a less engaging user journey and missed opportunities for maximizing revenue per session.

Prior to launching their new website, Ambiendo partnered with Nimstrata to integrate their Retail Cloud Connect Shopify App, a powerful solution designed to deliver a sophisticated and personalized e-commerce experience powered by Google Cloud's Vertex AI Search for Commerce. The implementation focused on several key areas.

Conversational Commerce Product Filtering

Nimstrata's app empowered Ambiendo with advanced product filtering capabilities, moving beyond traditional static filters. This allowed customers to find products more intuitively, mimicking a conversational approach to product discovery. By understanding user intent and preferences, the system could dynamically present relevant filtering options, streamlining the browsing process and reducing friction. This directly contributed to a more engaging and efficient shopping experience.

Learn more about conversational filters

Recommendations AI

A core strength of Nimstrata's solution was their deployment of Recommendations AI from Vertex AI Search, meticulously optimized to drive revenue per session. These models powered two crucial recommendation engines:

• Recommended for You: This personalized section presented products tailored to individual customer browsing history, purchase patterns, and inferred preferences. This proactive approach significantly increased the likelihood of discovery for relevant items, leading to higher conversion rates.

• Others You May Like:This feature broadened the scope of recommendations by suggesting complementary or similar products based on a customer's current view or cart. By highlighting additional desirable items, Ambiendo could effectively increase average order value and encourage further exploration of their catalog.

Expanding Product Variants

Ambiendo leveraged Nimstrata's flexible product variant expansion feature to address a critical aspect of their product catalog. By choosing to "expand variants by Color (Farbe)," each distinct color option for a single product was presented as an individual product in search results and collections. This strategy offered several benefits.

• Better Search Performance: Google's Vertex AI models worked even better after this was enabled.

• Improved Discoverability: Customers could directly see and select their preferred color without needing to click into a product detail page, accelerating the decision-making process.

• Enhanced Visual Merchandising: Presenting each color variant individually allowed for a richer visual display of Ambiendo's product range, making their collections more appealing and comprehensive.

• Streamlined User Experience: By surfacing all available color options upfront, Ambiendo reduced clicks and simplified the path to purchase for color-sensitive items.

Displaying Backordered and Pre-Ordered Items

Managing inventory effectively, especially for items not immediately available, was a crucial requirement for Ambiendo. Nimstrata's app provided the granular control needed:

• Strategic Hiding of Out-of-Stock Items: Ambiendo could easily hide products that were permanently out of stock, preventing customer frustration and maintaining a clean, relevant product catalog.

• Visibility for Future Availability: The app allowed Ambiendo to display out-of-stock items that were backordered or available for pre-order. This transparency managed customer expectations and captured demand for popular items, ensuring that potential sales were not lost due to temporary unavailability. This feature was vital for maintaining customer trust and securing future revenue.

Optimizing App Block Performance

A key aspect of the collaboration between Ambiendo and Nimstrata was a dedicated focus on best-in-class App Block performance. Recognizing the impact of page load speed on user experience and SEO, both teams worked closely to ensure the seamless integration and optimal functioning of the Nimstrata app within Ambiendo's Shopify store. This joint effort involved:

• Selectively Lazy Loading Images: Implementing lazy loading for images within the app blocks ensured that images only loaded when they entered the user's viewport, significantly reducing initial page load times.

• Optimizing Scroll Behavior: Careful attention was paid to how the app blocks rendered and behaved during scrolling, preventing jankiness and ensuring a smooth, responsive user interface.

• Reducing Large Contentful Paint (LCP) Shifts: Efforts were made to minimize layout shifts that can occur as content loads, leading to a more stable and pleasant visual experience for the user and improving core web vitals.

Conclusion

By adopting Nimstrata's Retail Cloud Connect Shopify App, Ambiendo achieved a significantly enhanced e-commerce platform, leading to:

• Improved Customer Engagement: Personalized search, recommendations, and intuitive filtering created a more engaging and efficient shopping journey.

• Increased Revenue per Session: The live recommendation models directly contributed to higher conversion rates and increased average order value.

• Streamlined Product Discovery: Expanding product variants by color made it easier for customers to find and purchase their desired items.

• Optimized Inventory Management: Effective handling of backordered and pre-ordered items prevented lost sales and maintained customer satisfaction.

• Superior Site Performance: The collaborative effort on app block optimization resulted in a faster, more responsive, and visually stable website, positively impacting user experience and SEO.

Ambiendo's partnership with Nimstrata successfully transformed their online store into a more personalized, performant, and profitable e-commerce destination, demonstrating the power of intelligent retail technology powered by Google Cloud.