Speaking ahead of Shoptalk 2023  - one of the retail industry’s most important events - the companies say enterprise brands on Shopify can today access Google Cloud’s Discovery Al solutions directly through Commerce Components, Shopify’s modern, composable stack for enterprise retail.

“This integration, which can now be used by Shopify merchants globally and is available in most languages, increases access to Google’s advanced search and browsing technologies so that retailers can create more fluid and fruitful shopping experiences for their customers,” the companies say.

Shopify and Google Cloud’s new integration equips enterprise brands with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven product discovery capabilities that address real-world business challenges, including:

Google Cloud Retail Search, which provides advanced query understanding that can produce better results from even broad queries, including non-product and semantic searches, to effectively match product attributes with website content for fast, relevant product discovery.

An AI-powered browse feature that uses machine learning to select the optimal ordering of products on a retailer's e-commerce site once shoppers choose a category, like "women's jackets" or "kitchenware." Over time, the AI learns the preferred product ordering for each page on an e-commerce site using historical data, optimising how and what products are shown for accuracy, relevance, and likelihood of making a sale.

An AI-driven personalisation capability that customises the results customers get when they search and browse retailers’ websites. The AI underpinning the personalisation capability uses a customer's behaviour on an e-commerce site, such as their clicks, cart, purchases, and other information, to determine shopper tastes and preferences.

A Google Cloud Recommendations AI solution that helps retailers deliver personalised recommendations at scale. Recent upgrades to Recommendations AI can make a retailer's e-commerce properties even more personalised, dynamic and helpful for individual customers.

Advanced security and privacy practices that help ensure retailer data is isolated with strong access controls and is only used to deliver relevant search results on their own properties.

“We’re thrilled to continue our long-standing partnership with Google Cloud,” said Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify. “We’re bringing together the best in commerce with the best in search to solve a complex and costly problem for enterprise retailers—world-class search and discovery for the online store.”

“Shopify integrating Google Cloud’s Discovery AI technology into its enterprise retail solution puts the power of AI directly into the hands of merchants and brands to solve everyday problems,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Now, retailers will be able to enhance their digital properties with better product discovery experiences, creating more fulfilling shopping experiences for their customers.”

According to Shopify and Google Cloud, despite the continued rise in online shopping, many shoppers report hurdles in the product discovery experience on retailers’ ecommerce properties, and new research from a Google Cloud-commissioned Harris Poll survey found that search abandonment—when a shopper searches for a product on a retailer’s website or mobile app, but doesn’t find what they are looking for—costs retailers more than $2 trillion annually globally.