Percentage of searches with no results cut from 2% to 0.1% with Vertex AI Search
10% increase in click-through rate
5.5% increase in overall search-based revenue
30% reduction in customers reporting seeing irrelevant search results
2% increase in returning customers
Toolstation, one of Britain's fastest-growing tool suppliers, needed customers to be able to find products easily on its site. Migrating its search experience to Vertex AI Search for commerce, Toolstation gave customers highly accurate search results, driving significant increases in click-through rate and search-based revenue.
Toolstation, one of Britain's fastest-growing tool suppliers, needed customers to be able to find products easily on its site. Migrating its search experience to Vertex AI Search for commerce, Toolstation gave customers highly accurate search results, driving significant increases in click-through rate and search-based revenue.
We had thousands of rules that had accumulated over the years. They improved things, but they never fixed the underlying problem. So we reached out to Google Cloud to improve our product discovery, and were introduced to Vertex AI Search for commerce.
Chris Other
Customer, Marketing, and Digital Director, Toolstation
Whether it's a roofer in need of sealant, or a DIY enthusiast running low on paint, Toolstation knows that many of its customers don't come to browse. They know exactly what they want, and they have no time to waste. That's why Toolstation places such importance on customer convenience. With 580 stores across the UK, and more than 5,500 employees, the retailer goes out of its way to help its customers find what they’re looking for and get back to their projects as quickly as possible.
However, with its website and mobile app accounting for roughly half of all transactions, Toolstation was concerned that customers searching for products online weren't always finding the product they searched for. With customers using synonyms, brand names, and a lot of trade-specific slang to search for products, Toolstation's previous, third-party search tool sometimes struggled to return satisfactory results.
Customers would often resort to searching for the products using general Google Search, before clicking the Toolstation link to re-enter the site. Sometimes they would simply abandon their journeys altogether, leading to poor reviews and lost sales for Toolstation.
Toolstation worked around this by manually setting rules to teach its search tool to recognize the more common search terms, for example, 'lawn' means 'grass' and 'parcel tape' means 'packaging tape.' However, this process was not only time consuming, with the team adding new rules every week, but it also only picked up the more frequent search terms, meaning many searches continued to deliver no results.
"We had thousands of rules that had accumulated over the years," explains Chris Other, Customer, Marketing, and Digital Director at Toolstation. "They improved things, but they never fixed the underlying problem. So we reached out to Google Cloud to improve our product discovery, and were introduced to Vertex AI Search for commerce."
Increasing search-based revenue by 5% with accurate search results
Having maintained a strong relationship with the Google Cloud team since migrating to the platform in 2020, Toolstation requested a demonstration and was impressed with the ability of Vertex AI Search for commerce to return accurate results for terms that its third-party tool struggled with. With a culture of experimentation at the company, Toolstation was keen to move fast, and decided to put the technology to the test. The retailer uploaded its entire product catalog in one night and set about testing Vertex AI Search on live traffic on the website the very next day.
The results were immediate. While the search bar had the same look and feel for both streams of traffic, customers being given the Vertex AI Search experience were almost always able to find the product they were searching for. After seeing consistent improvements in the accuracy of results, Toolstation made the decision to switch all traffic, on both the website and app, to Vertex AI Search.
As soon as we moved to Vertex AI Search, the number of searches with no results fell to 0.1% of searches. Click-through rate was more than 10% higher every day. And because more customers were finding what they were looking for, we saw overall search-based revenue increase by more than 5%.
Rob Contreras
Head of Innovation, Toolstation
"With our previous search tool, around 2% of all searches returned zero results," recallsRob Contreras, Head of Innovation at Toolstation. "As soon as we moved to Vertex AI Search, the number of searches with no results fell to 0.1% of searches. Click-through rate was more than 10% higher every day. And because more customers were finding what they were looking for, we saw overall search-based revenue increase by more than 5%."
Delivering a better customer experience online and in store
With customers able to find the products they were looking for, customer satisfaction improved, with a 30% reduction in the number of customers reporting seeing irrelevant search results with Google Cloud. Greater customer satisfaction has also led to increased customer loyalty, with Toolstation seeing a 2% increase in the number of customers returning to the site.
Following these positive results, Toolstation set about integrating Vertex AI Search into its customer contact center, where customers can place orders over the phone. Having to search for products while on the phone means contact center staff sometimes make typos and spelling mistakes in the search bar. Previously, this led to searches returning no results, frustrating staff and customers alike. Now, with Vertex AI Search, those call center staff can find the right products for customers more quickly, saving call center staff time, while improving the overall customer experience.
Toolstation has now also implemented Vertex AI Search in its in-store tills, helping staff find products as quickly in its physical stores as customers now can online. Staff stated that the new search functionality has been useful with customers who may need more guidance in what they are looking for, and it is beneficial to new members of staff who are learning the ropes. Overall, it makes life easier when searching products for customers, the 'similar items' function has been particularly helpful to serve customers more efficiently.
Powering a continually improving search experience with machine learning
The longer we use the tool, the better it’s going to get. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen with the results since going live.
Rob Contreras
Head of Innovation, Toolstation
Powered by Vertex AI machine learning, Toolstation's new search bar automatically recognizes customers' search terms, meaning the Toolstation merchandising team no longer needs to monitor failed searches and manually correct them with new rules. Instead, team members can focus on optimizing the performance of other areas of the ecommerce platform, adding further value to the business.
What's more, the ML models are constantly learning from the search data. "Every time a customer uses the search bar, every time they click on a product, every time they buy… we send all those events to Google Cloud to help train the model, so the next time someone does the same search, Google Cloud can optimize the results," explains Contreras. "The longer we use the tool, the better it's going to get. And that's exactly what we've seen with the results since going live."
Experimenting the way to future success
Following its success with Vertex AI Search, Toolstation has decided to migrate all its discovery tools, including browse, recommendations and personalization features, to Vertex AI Search for commerce. Bringing all its search and discovery tools to Google Cloud will not only help to simplify its tech stack and deliver a better customer experience, it will also increase efficiency at Toolstation. As with its previous search tool, the Toolstation team was using manual rules to maintain its previous recommendation blocks. With Vertex AI Search for commerce, those recommendations will instead be powered by ML, once again freeing up Toolstation team members to concentrate on improving the performance of its online store contributing to tangible results, including a 10% increase in revenue attributed to recommendations.
Using filters to provide an optimal customer experience is a big focus for Toolstation this year. If we can get that right, it would be huge. It could be as big an uplift as we saw from our search migration, if not bigger.
Rob Contreras
Head of Innovation, Toolstation
Next, Toolstation plans to refine its product data to help it make the most of Vertex AI Search for commerce features such as tile navigation, which will help customers to refine their product searches more easily, and conversational search, which will allow customers to interact with the search bar using natural language. "Using filters to provide an optimal customer experience is a big focus for Toolstation this year," says Contreras. "If we can get that right, it would be huge. It could be as big an uplift as we saw from our search migration, if not bigger."
The Toolstation team is currently enjoying its ability to experiment with Google Cloud solutions to deliver customers a better experience both online and in store. Contreras has even been innovating with Gemini and Vertex AI Search to allow in-store staff to scan customers' hand-written shopping lists, which would automatically populate the shopping cart with items ready to be bought.
"Google Cloud is the best platform to be on when it comes to AI technology and tools, and we've got direct contact with the Google Cloud team to help us get the best out of it," says Contreras. "We're really excited to see how far we can push it."
Toolstation is one of Britain's fastest growing suppliers of tools, accessories and building supplies to the trade, home improvers, and self-builders. With a multi-channel offering, Toolstation customers can buy online, at over 550 stores across the UK and through its dedicated UK call center.
Industry: Retail
Location: UK
Products: Vertex AI Search for commerce
