Trendyol: Creating trend-setting ecommerce experiences with near real-time insights on Looker
About Trendyol
Headquartered in Türkiye, Trendyol is one of the world's leading ecommerce marketplaces. By offering seamless digital shopping experiences, Trendyol has earned the trust of over 40 million customers and 250,000 sellers.
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Contact usBy streamlining data insights with Looker, Trendyol makes near real-time queries available across its business, informing decisions that boost sales and the customer experience.
Google Cloud results
- Leverages near real-time insights for dynamic sales strategies, maximizing revenue
- Scales seamlessly during high-traffic events, such as Black Friday, enabling sales-boosting campaign adjustments
- Accelerates data-driven decision-making with scheduled reports and automations in Looker
- Empowers 1500+ employees to make and share reports and dashboards with Looker and Google Sheets, improving collaboration
Scales to 260,000+ queries a day during peak periods
Ecommerce has set the bar high for consumer expectations, putting material desires within easy reach. To truly stand out in the crowded ecommerce field, stores need to create user experiences that are personalized, seamless, and engaging at every step. Trendyol delivers just that.
Founded in Türkiye in 2010, Trendyol has grown to become one of the largest ecommerce platforms in the world, with over 40 million customers. What started as a single shopping site has grown into a fully featured and multilingual ecommerce marketplace including business units such as Trendyol Express and Dolap, which handle logistics and the second-hand market respectively. This remarkable growth is in part due to Trendyol's emphasis on innovation.
"We're a technology company as well as an ecommerce company," says Ayça Kaypmaz, Head of Data Warehouse Analysis at Trendyol. "Even though we work at scale, we're constantly trying to keep the feel of a startup and look for innovative solutions to help grow the business."
Scaling new data heights with Google Cloud
With more than 250,000 sellers on the platform, an inventory exceeding 80 million, and tens of billions of page views per year, Trendyol sits on mountains of data. Used correctly, this data can help Trendyol and its sellers optimize operations, personalize shopping experiences, and predict market trends. But, by 2019, as Trendyol expanded into new international markets, its existing on-premises data warehouse understandably struggled to keep up. Trendyol needed a cloud-based analytics platform that could scale with the company, as well as a business intelligence solution that could turn its rapidly growing datasets into powerful insights.
"If we can't process data and deliver reports on time, it can result in missed revenue opportunities for us and our sellers," explains Kaypmaz. "Due to our growth, our on-premises data warehouse couldn't scale dynamically, especially during peak retail seasons like the holidays. That's why we decided to migrate to Google Cloud."
"If we can't process data and deliver reports on time, it could result in missed revenue opportunities for us and our sellers. Due to our growth, our on-premises data warehouse couldn't scale dynamically, especially during peak retail seasons like the holidays. That's why we decided to migrate to Google Cloud."
—Ayça Kaypmaz, Head of Data Warehouse Analysis, TrendyolSmooth migration, big impact
The Trendyol team approached its migration to Google Cloud step-by-step, first transitioning their data warehouse to BigQuery before deploying its business intelligence platform on Looker. This phased approach allowed for a smooth transition and minimized disruptions to its operations.
When it came to rolling out Looker, Trendyol focused on a few key architectural decisions: eliminating unnecessary reports based on usage statistics, auto-generating base views, and creating team-based shared branches.
Using Looker's access control features, the team built a strict security model into the solution from the very beginning. "We have several group companies and manage our own brand, and due to strict regulations, none of these entities should see each other's data," explains Semra Uludağ, Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Team Lead, Trendyol. "With Looker, we can define detailed access control rules and policies, enabling us to manage security and governance requirements effectively."
Unlocking sales insights with BigQuery and Looker
BigQuery alone was a massive step up from the previous analytics platform, but the Trendyol team saw even more improvement when it added Looker to the equation. Both tools reinforce each other's strengths, amplifying the company's data analysis capabilities.
"BigQuery and Looker work great together, which gives us a real performance boost," explains Uludağ. "Looker connects directly to BigQuery as a data source, eliminating the need for additional connectors or middleware. And because it generates SQL queries that are executed directly in BigQuery, Looker can fully leverage BigQuery's processing capabilities."
There are significant operational benefits as well: "Thanks to Looker's smart caching mechanism, we avoid redundant data fetching when users send similar queries," explains Uludağ. "This saves time and optimizes our resources, markedly boosting our performance."
"BigQuery and Looker work great together, which gives us a real performance boost. Looker connects directly to BigQuery as a data source, eliminating the need for additional connectors or middleware. And because it generates SQL queries that are executed directly in BigQuery, Looker can fully leverage BigQuery's processing capabilities."
—Semra Uludağ, Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Team Lead, TrendyolEmpowering everyone to sell better
Today, BigQuery and Looker play a crucial role in Trendyol's data-driven decision-making. With self-service access to accurate and available data, teams can conduct their own analyses and make informed, data-based decisions that drive the success of the organization.
"Looker and BigQuery have transformed our approach to data," says Uludağ. "It's not just about making data accessible; it's about empowering employees to make informed decisions swiftly. Teams can leverage self-service BI tools for near real-time analysis, fostering a culture of autonomy and strategic insight."
Turning real-time metrics into sales with Looker
Tracking metrics is key to improving metrics—and with Looker, Trendyol can keep a close eye on all relevant financial and other data. From product margins (PM) to net merchandise value (NMV) and active shoppers (AS), Looker aggregates key metrics from across the business, enabling teams to make well-informed decisions based on near real-time data.
Having this visibility can have a massive impact, especially during peak sales events such as Black Friday. In those times, sales teams need to monitor performance metrics even more closely than usual, and react swiftly if sales campaigns aren't going as well as they should. One of Trendyol's busiest days during the Black Friday period of 2023 saw unprecedented activity with more than 260,000 queries run with Looker—compared to a daily average of 110,000.
"During campaign weeks like Black Friday, tiny changes to our campaigns can enormously impact the sales figures, so it's crucial to have the latest metrics and reports at hand," explains Kaypmaz. "Thanks to Looker, we can keep a close watch of our sales campaigns and act swiftly if we need to try something else."
This adaptability extends beyond marketing strategies, as Looker's real-time data exploration capabilities have proven invaluable in emergencies as well. After the 2023 earthquake that struck Türkiye, Trendyol was able to quickly pivot its operations. Utilizing Looker, the team analyzed data to identify how best to support people affected by the earthquake by funneling sellers and customers to the right products and logistics solutions.
One source of truth, unlimited insights
Data achieves its full potential only when it's readily accessible to those who need it. By customizing Looker to integrate with the tools and platforms already in use within the company, such as Salesforce, Trendyol has brought these powerful analytics directly into the daily workflows of its teams.
Many Trendyol teams use Google Sheets for data analysis. Thanks to the Connected Sheets feature, Google Sheets syncs directly with Looker, ensuring that data updates are seamlessly reflected across tools. This empowers even non-technical Trendyol employees with near real-time, accurate data for decision-making, while upholding a unified source of truth across the enterprise for quicker, more effective collaboration.
"Looker is easy to use, highly customizable, and integrates with many other platforms," summarizes Uludağ. "It significantly enhances our analysis processes and supports the day-to-day operations of our teams."
Maximizing impact with Google Cloud Consulting
From the outset, Google Cloud Consulting (GCC) was a key factor in enabling Trendyol to leverage BigQuery and Looker to maximum effect, improving efficiency across the whole organization. The GCC team constantly reviewed the platform's architecture and provided recommendations such as a hub and spoke data structure for improved agility, and an optimized caching mechanism that improved data refresh times by 38%.
The Google team also proactively monitors Trendyol's instance during peak shopping periods, ensuring quick response times if issues arise in these crucial phases. "Whenever we need support, our technical account manager is quick to bring us to the right resources," says Uludağ. "The Google Cloud support team pinpoints our bottlenecks and helps us solve them. As a result, our solutions are getting better day by day."
Shaping the ecommerce trends of tomorrow
The Trendyol team's knack for creating seamless ecommerce experiences has propelled the company to the forefront of the industry. Now, bolstered by the data and analytics capabilities of Google Cloud, they can anticipate customer needs with even greater precision and respond to opportunities in real-time.
Looking ahead, Trendyol's data team plans to extract even more value from Google Cloud solutions, whether it's through workflow optimization with the Looker API or improving content validation and management through automation and policy development.
"We've always been a data-centric company, but Google Cloud transformed the way we work with data, enabling us to empower our teams and make informed decisions that drive our success," says Kaypmaz. "We're not just keeping up, we're setting the pace for what's possible in ecommerce."
"We've always been a data-centric company, but Google Cloud transformed the way we work with data, enabling us to empower our teams and make informed decisions that drive our success. We're not just keeping up, we're setting the pace for what's possible in ecommerce."
—Ayça Kaypmaz, Head of Data Warehouse Analysis, TrendyolTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About Trendyol
Headquartered in Türkiye, Trendyol is one of the world's leading ecommerce marketplaces. By offering seamless digital shopping experiences, Trendyol has earned the trust of over 40 million customers and 250,000 sellers.