Here are some of our top snippets!

Understanding the human element:

Alongside Joanna and Laurina were five other speakers, including Amanda McCourt, Co-Founder of Pantee, a sustainable fashion brand. Amanda kicked off the discussion by emphasizing the importance of recognizing your audience as individuals with unique needs and desires. She stressed that building a community is not just about making sales, but creating a conversation.“It’s important to learn that there’s value to be extracted from your community or your audience that’s not just getting a sale” she shared. 

Amanda said she encourages brands to sit with their customers, truly listen to their feedback, and transform it into actionable insights. Later in the panel, Amanda shared a thoughtful example of this. Emphasizing the need for transparency between brands and consumers, she told a story of how—when one of Pantee’s most hopeful product launches went awry—the brand responded in such a way that led to a really positive outcome. Essentially, they launched a new collection and it didn’t perform anywhere near what they were anticipating. Pantee suspected there was an issue with their site that might’ve affected this, so posted on Instagram that they were offering anyone a 30% discount to anyone willing to give feedback and provide screenshots of their shopping experience. Not only did this give the brand crucial insight into what went wrong, but got so much traction that it turned out to be their biggest sales day to date—improving loyalty while also converting many new customers.  

Amanda shared how she believes “a lot of brands are really scared to say when they’re messing up and when they don’t have the answers. So we treat it as a two-way conversation.” By involving customers in problem-solving, they discovered that the issue was a product issue, not a website issue. Amanda highlighted the valuable trust gained, creating a stronger bond with the audience.

Laurina Scott, Digital Marketing Manager from Skinnydip, echoed this sentiment highlighting the significance of a human touch within social commerce. She underlined the value of having a human tone of voice that resonates with their demographic: largely 16-30-year-old females and Gen Z. Laurina humorously described the brand’s tone of voice as “the girl in the bathroom that you meet on a drunk night out and you suddenly become best friends with.” This is crucial for Skinnydip, Laurina explained that they want to maintain their authenticity and connection with their customers.

Targeting and reaching your demographics:

The discussion shifted to tactics for reaching these specific female audiences. That’s when Jo from our customer success team weighed in to stress the importance of personalizing the customer journey. Jo discussed how impactful it can be to create content pop-ups that are relevant to the user and how, using Nosto, merchants can set up segments and target them with such campaigns. Jo talked about the buyer journey and how, as an increasing portion of shoppers are arriving at brands’ sites from social media apps or other mobile platforms, brands need to seamlessly transition them to landing pages that maintain consistent messaging and streamline their product discovery journey on site. 

How women have been transforming DTC and social commerce:

Rita Harnett, Global Head of DTC & Social Commerce at Wavemaker Global, delved into the transformative role of women entrepreneurs in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) and social commerce landscape. 

Rita added to the conversation by discussing the role women play in social commerce, saying how she believes women are innate multitaskers who rely significantly on their communities and have an active role in engaging with other women—all of which translate smoothly into the social commerce sphere. Rita spotlighted influencers and women-owned brands as examples of fostering female communities by building trust through try-ons and tutorials, giving the example of Charlotte Tilbury and Victoria Beckham.

Rita provided insights into the evolving online shopping behavior of female consumers over the last 12-18 months. She stressed the need for short, engaging videos and seamless end-to-end experiences, urging brands to understand what resonates with their consumers and create curated video experiences.

Fostering communities:

Something the panelists emphasized and commented on throughout was the need for brands to build communities with their customers. This led to discussing the rising popularity of having influencers and what we now call ‘micro-influencers’. Sara Russell, Marketing Director at 5874 Commerce and panel host, shared how she, as a consumer, wants to see products from someone who she can relate to and therefore prefers seeing influencers who mirror her demographic, such as fellow moms.

Hannah Walker, Head of Mid Market UK at Reddit, a social news and forum website, shed light on the unique nature of Reddit as a platform for community building. She asked the room how many people use Reddit, to which the majority showed hands. She went on to say that “Reddit is a home for different communities, with 100,000 active communities every day, from every different subject.”

Hannah explained how, given its anonymity, Reddit provides a space for genuine conversations and in-depth product research, making it a valuable channel for brands. The platform’s focus on information and research contributes to a longer consideration phase for users, setting it apart from other social platforms. This lends itself to trust and authenticity from users, which is reflected in how people often turn to platforms like Reddit over Google Search.

It’s also what makes Reddit a fruitful place for social listening—to see what your customers and prospects are discussing about your brand and products. Due to the community setting and informative nature, Hannah said that often, brands create megaposts as part of their marketing strategy giving the example of when Reddit ran a campaign with Boots for Boots’latest No.7 product line by creating a megapost filled with information. As Laura put it “On Reddit, people are there to learn, they are there to research products to make decisions. They can then engage with posts, and leave comments, and brands can reply to them. I think that’s where the power lies..” 

Following this, Laurina from Skinnydip shared her success in leveraging authenticity to drive sales through small influencers. She said that social commerce naturally lends itself to diversity by empowering different types of women which she does through influencers. She shared an example of one influencer, “Anna, whose handle is @thesinglemama. Every day, she just goes live while making her kid’s dinner, something like chicken dippers. She was wearing one of our dressing gowns, and she sold 800 units for us in 26 minutes. I was like, who is this? And how do we employ her?” she joked. Laurina notes how fun online commerce can be compared to traditional channels. “We’ve worked with amazing influencers like Jade from Little Mix but it’s actually more fun working with the mums, kids, and students.” It not only supports them as they can earn money from commissions but she says it’s refreshing to see all types of female influencers achieving success.

Conclusion:
From building authentic communities and fostering influencer relationships to utilizing unique platforms like Reddit, The Rise of Social Commerce showcased the diversity and importance of women-led initiatives within the space. And we’re here for it!

The post Insights from ‘The Women’s Domain & The Rise of Social Commerce’ Panel appeared first on Nosto.

Here are our highlights from the talk.

Leveraging Smart Merchandising

To set the stage, our very own Phil Gregory, Regional Head of Customer Experience at Nosto, explained the essence of intelligent product discovery. Phil explained how this combines AI, machine learning, and data analytics to ensure that shoppers find the exact products they are looking for, and by analyzing factors such as brand preferences, color choices, and purchase history, intelligent product discovery to take online shopping to a whole new level.

From there, our client Monique Green, Ecommerce Manager at Casio, led the discussion towards the importance of merchandising within product discovery. Monique explained how, with a small ecommerce team overseeing various aspects of the website, time is a precious resource—which merchandising helps with significantly. Monique said, “What Nosto has done is managed to give a lot of time back to the team.”

Monique then explained how such merchandising rules ensure that Casio’s category pages are relevant for their shoppers, prioritizing the most pertinent, in-stock products.

“We put merchandising rules in the back-end so that if a given product’s getting more clicks, it would move to the top of a user’s search results. Or, if it’s out of stock, it would move to the bottom. And that’s just constantly working in the background”

As a result of such efforts, Casio saw an increase in engagement in just a few weeks, particularly on product listing pages (PLPs), some of which (particularly low-trafficked ones) weren’t prioritized prior to using Nosto’s Category Merchandising because of the manual effort this would’ve required. Monique stressed how “…the [Casio] team has spent less time doing merchandising but our metrics have improved”.

Kevin Rowlands, Senior Ecommerce Growth Manager for Dermalogica UK and Ireland, also shared Monique’s emphasis on Nosto’s merchandising in the product discovery journey. Kevin said he found it “…really surprising that not only does merchandising give time back to the trade team, but it drives better conversions than if we did it manually”.

Kevin went on to reveal how Dermalogica takes its merchandising to the next level. He spoke about how they don’t only set rules in alignment with business objectives, but also subject them to rigorous A/B testing to determine what’s most successful for conversion—which, Kevin said, is “much better than normal human thought”. 

For example, currently, Dermalogica is A/B testing the ‘revenue per view’ attribute by prioritizing it across their top 3 three traffic categories for another layer of user interaction. 

Relevant Product Discovery

Next, the panelists engaged with how personalization is an integral part of intelligent product discovery. Phil led the discussion, raising how customer expectations of having shopping experiences entirely tailored to them, are only growing. 

From here, Kevin delved into Dermalogica’s innovative approach to personalizing the product discovery journey, and spoke about how this linked to their skin analysis technology, “Facemapping is a data collection tool that we use on-site. It allows a visitor to upload a picture of their face. The picture gets scanned, and a user answers a few questions that help us recommend the right products for them”.

Kevin went on to explain how, thanks to Shopify and Nosto, Dermalogica can personalize the entire customer journey using the findings of their Face Mapping analysis to make every interaction relevant and serve products tailored to their specific skin type.

Kevin outlined this hyper-personalization as a key thing for Dermalogica: “I think it’s going to be one of the biggest things that we do this year. To make sure that we’re growing all of our business metrics around LTV, conversion rate, but crucially to make sure that we’re doing personalization for a meaningful reason and for something that the customer will find rewarding.”

Following this, Monique spoke about how Casio maximizes space on its product display pages (PDPs). By displaying different varieties of the product a shopper is viewing, such as color options and watch face sizes. Monique said this ensures that customers can easily find the product that resonates with them, making the product discovery journey relevant.

Monique gave an example of this– on one of their best-selling product they included all colorways on its PDP and within the first seven days, experienced over 30% add-to-basket rate.

Balancing Automation and Human Touch

The discussion then led to the importance of utilizing AI and other automation capabilities whilst retaining a human touch for customer on-site experiences.

To begin with, Kevin highlighted the importance of collecting quality data for effective personalization, emphasizing how meaningful recommendations stem from feeding accurate data points. Kevin said, as an example, Dermalogica’s Face Mapping tool is a perfect balance between automation and conveying that human touch. It achieves the same result that a customer would get from a professional skin therapist in a store by having the customer provide information.

For Kevin, being able to leverage powerful data creates unique impressionable experiences for their customers. “Nosto is a great tool for being able to make use of all those data points and surface the correct content and the correct product recommendations. And really it’s quite limitless in terms of what you want to show people.”

Monique explained that Casio does leverage Nosto’s intelligent AI for Search and Category Merchandising to help streamline efforts, cutting through their larger product catalog and delivering relevant results.

Following that, Monique mentioned how the unique human touch at Casio is for a specific division, showcasing that AI can complement human expertise. Monique finds that, due to the small product range when it comes to Casio’s calculators,, it’s simpler to have their in-house experts manage it and have that human influence where it’s easy to do so. 

Achieving Loyalty without Heavy Discounts

Next, the panelists delved into how their brands can rely on intelligent product discovery to maintain brand loyalty without having to use the likes of big discount strategies like many brands do.

As a high-end skincare brand, Kevin said that Dermalogica avoids discounting strategies to maintain its premium branding. Instead, Kevin shared that Dermalogica has found content pop-ups and FOMO messaging on PDPs, such as ‘trending products’ or displaying how many people have purchased in 24 hours to be effective.

Kevin elaborated that Dermalogica have also been experimenting with A/B testing the likes of free shipping offers to drive conversions. Through this, they segment customers and show half free delivery messaging and the other half free delivery after a certain spend threshold to determine the best-converting messaging. 

“We simply wouldn’t be able to do this without tools like Shopify and Nosto…”, said Kevin.

Like Dermalogica, Monique described how Casio similarly avoids big discount strategies. Monique said that both Casio and G-Shock have a clever content pop-up that is triggered when a shopper highlights and copies a product’s SKU or product name, as though they’re going to search for the product elsewhere to hunt for a better deal This pop-up essentially shows the shopper a discount code to use at check-out, to prevent them from bouncing to look elsewhere.

Monique stressed the impact of this particular pop-up, explaining how Casio, for example, has witnessed a 20% conversion rate for that campaign alone.

“We’ve managed to improve our retention rate, reduce our bounce rate, stop customers going to competitors because they found that discount code that they’re essentially going to look for.”, said Monique.

Conclusion

For Casio and Dermalogica, the impact of improving product discovery has been hugely beneficial. Not only has it improved the lives of their ecommerce team saving them crucial time but it has also delivered results from conversions, to AOV and even loyalty. It was amazing to hear from Nosto clients about how they’re testing, innovating, and perfecting their product discovery journey.

See you next year at ecommerce expo 2024!

If you’d like to learn more about strategies to improve your brand’s product discovery that are in line with your business goals then reach out to our ecommerce specialists who are happy to help.

The post A look-back at Nosto’s Ecommerce Expo session: talking ‘intelligent product discovery’ with clients, Dermalogica, and Casio appeared first on Nosto.

What am I cooking, I hear you ask? Well, since – modestly – I am a very good cook, literally anything!
I would say I have phases: lately I have been focusing on Szechuan cuisine, improving my very delicious Dan Dan noodles and mapo tofu recipe, and before that I had the Middle Eastern/Ottolenghi phase… I make a very mean bulgur salad, falafel and chicken kebab.

I don’t know what about you, but I got hungry just writing this down!

Q: What are you most looking forward to as Findologic joins Nosto?

Jacopo: To meet all the new Findologic peeps at Nostopalooza and to bring Search to the next level!!

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Jacopo: Definitely “Chandelier” by SIA, but trust me, you don’t want me to sing it…

Q: Do you have any routines you use to improve your energy and focus?

Jacopo: “I try to do some anti-anxiety guided meditation every day when I wake up, and I only listen to instrumental jazz while working. This really get me in focus, because I am not focalizing on lyrics ?”

Q: What are some of your favorite TV shows or movies?

Jacopo: I am all about comedy, and a big fan of Saturday Night Live. And “Superstore”, a NBC TV show – that is hilarious and exactly my type of comedy.r)

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Jacopo: To take 3 very deep breaths when I am panicking about something – very important takeaway lesson for somebody like me who tends to panic a bit too much eheh”

Q: What emoji represents you and why?

Jacopo: I am a hugger, so definitely the ?

The post Team Spotlight: Meet Jacopo at Nosto appeared first on Nosto.

Q: What are you most looking forward to as Findologic joins Nosto?

Bianca: I’m looking forward to new challenges and opportunities, as well as the chance to work on exciting new projects. Furthermore, having access to new resources and technologies to develop innovative solutions for our customers/merchants and having a greater impact on the e-commerce industry together. And of course working with an amazing team of Nostonians. ?

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Bianca: There are so many, but one that always goes well is Karma Chameleon from Culture Club.

Q: Do you have any routines you use to improve your energy and focus?

Bianca: Not really beside coffee I enjoy doing sports or taking a walk to free my mind.

Q: What are some of your favorite TV shows or movies?

Bianca: I recently watched “Devs”, which I really recommend (mind-blowing). My fall time favourite movies are Matrix and Harry Potter

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Bianca: “Embrace discomfort and embrace failure, because they are essential components of growth and learning.”

Q: What emoji represents you and why?

Bianca: ? I love owls and I’m a night person

The post Team Spotlight: Meet Bianca at Findologic appeared first on Nosto.

Q: What are you most looking forward to as Findologic joins Nosto?

Lukas: The Nosto-Features and the NOSTONIANS of course!

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Lukas: “Loving you is easy cause you’re beautiful” from Minnie Ripperton.

Q: Do you have any routines you use to improve your energy and focus?

Lukas: “Crazy Wolf” super cheap energy drink sold here in Prague! Not a daily routine, but I love to see Ballet in the Theatre, allows me to enter another world and escape reality.

Q: What are some of your favorite TV shows or movies?

Lukas: Shtisel, Giri Haji, Dirk Gently, Arrested Development, Unorthodox, True Detective, & all kind of Nature Documentaries & Peppa Pig (watching with my daughter)

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Lukas: “Be patient!” After going home from Vacation in Rome by car I said after 9 hours driving without a break that my leg hurts. My beloved girlfriend said “Not my problem”. Sort of a good advice! ;-)”

Q: What emoji represents you and why?

Lukas: ? Work: Daily work requires to find answers and solutions. Private: I love to read (books & magazines) – so I am impressed by different thoughts, perspectives, lives, humans…

The post Team Spotlight: Meet Lukas at Findologic appeared first on Nosto.

Q: What are you most looking forward to as Findologic joins Nosto?

Kaisa: I look forward to seeing what I can learn from our new colleagues and what great things we can bring into our culture as a result of two organisations joining forces.

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Kaisa: Queen always does the trick, especially Mr Farenheit.

Q: Do you have any routines you use to improve your energy and focus?

Kaisa: Taking a small break and making a cup of tea, always helps me re-focus on things at hand.

Q: What are some of your favorite TV shows or movies?

Kaisa: For some reason I really like Australian TV shows, The Block being one of my all time favourites. Currently, while I’m waiting for a new season to come to Finland, I’m binging on The Crown.

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Kaisa: “Change happens at the speed of trust.”

Q: What emoji represents you and why?

Kaisa: ? I love making lists and taking notes. I have a terribly short and bad memory, so I always have to write things down.

The post Team Spotlight: Meet Kaisa at Nosto appeared first on Nosto.

Q: What are you most looking forward to as Findologic joins Nosto?

Rihad: Joining what seems to be a great team and having the opportunity to help customers/ merchants grow with an awesome set to products.

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Rihad: I guess if I had to choose it would be The Prodigy – Firestarter or Pink Floyd – Wish you were here. Whatever fits the occasion.

Q: Do you have any routines you use to improve your energy and focus?

Rihad: Spending time in nature or just going for a walk while listening to some music.

Q: What are some of your favorite TV shows or movies?

Rihad: Breaking Bad, Big Lebowski and almost everything from Tarantino.

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Rihad: You can’t fail, you can only improve and at least learn how stuff is not working. It was something like that, I think it’s clear what it is supposed to mean.

Q: What emoji represents you and why?

Rihad: ? because I like the summer/ sun.

The post Team Spotlight: Meet Rihad at Findologic appeared first on Nosto.

Q: What are you most looking forward to as Findologic joins Nosto?

Saija: Getting to know more people and working with an even more international team.

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Saija: I tend to shy away from karaoke but I Ran by A Flock Of Seagulls or My Girl by The Temptations could probably get me up there

Q: Do you have any routines you use to improve your energy and focus?

Saija: If possible going for a quick walk during work day/between meetings, when not at work doing regular sports and relaxing.

Q: What are some of your favorite TV shows or movies?

Saija: There are too many good ones so it’s hard to pick, but I do have a very special place in my heart for all the Disney movies.

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Saija: ‘Two ears, one mouth’.

Q: What emoji represents you and why?

Saija: ?️ I love traveling

The post Team Spotlight: Meet Saija at Nosto appeared first on Nosto.

And we’ve placed it directly in our Commerce Experience Platform (CXP). Why’s that important? Search is one of the strongest signals of buying intent, but, until now, valuable search data has been left siloed within stand-alone point solutions. 

Launching search as part of our unified CXP means retailers can leverage the full power of search data across their entire store. This opens up massive opportunities for retailers to create personalized, authentic, and relevant customer experiences at every touchpoint, influencing product recommendations, content personalization, merchandising, and more, delivering seamlessly connected shopping experiences from the moment a user lands on their site. Here’s a video that can just show you how great the product is.

The latest product in our CXP is now available globally and follows the acquisitions of ecommerce site search solution, SearchNode, and product discovery platform, Findologic, in 2022, meaning we’re uniquely positioned to disrupt the product discovery market with decades of technical expertise. You can read more about our product in this article, or understand why we built the product by taking a look at this market research we released at the same time.

Global launch events in NYC, London, Sydney, and a live stream

To celebrate the newest addition to our platform, we held a special product release party in three different cities, London, Sydney, and New York—where we live streamed our Search panel from a rooftop bar in Manhattan! If you want to watch the live stream, you can head over here and check it out.

Check out the highlights of all three events before we get down to the details of each special occasion!

So here’s what went down in NYC

Nosto leadership was joined by global retailers Perry Ellis and A.L.C. at the rooftop of The Press Lounge, where we invited our partners and friends to the big unveiling with warm New York weather and afternoon cocktails! 

We not only dove into our Search product, but also shared brand new research that uncovered the expectation gaps between what shoppers want from site search and what brands were actually providing, along with an insightful Q&A with our panelists. 

When asked about some of their favorite features of our Search product, Lexis Kambour, Ecommerce Manager at Perry Ellis said, “Customer searches these days are a little more specific, a little more demanding. They’re not just searching for a polo; now, it’s a polo with striped collar or a polo with a print pattern. So for us, I love that Nosto’s Search can recognize things like color.”

A.L.C.’s SVP Marketing & Digital, Hilary Peterson, said, “Being able to leverage AI is best, especially because we don’t have to manually change anything. It took less than a month to get Search up. That, and there wasn’t any undue burden or stress on our development resources either.”

Learn how Perry Ellis used segmentation to personalize their search results here, and how A.L.C. doubled conversion rate on their search pages through merchandising rules here.

“We want to make sure that every part of the shopping experience is completely relevant to the customer. We’ve gone from product recommendations, bundles, segmentation and now, to really deliver on our vision of having one single platform that informs everything a user does on your website, we have Search.” – Jim Lofgren, CEO

Here’s what went down in London

From a bright rooftop to a bike shed with neon lighting, our Search event in London took off with ecommerce experts and leading brands, Gym + Coffee and Cox & Cox. Everyone grabbed a drink and sat down to listen to the panelists share their thoughts on our new research about product discovery, and how investing in Search technology has changed the game. 

Ecommerce Manager at Gym + Coffee, Lee McNamara, spoke to how our site search has increased their team’s productivity and enhanced their site’s overall personalization strategy. “Our conversion rates are hitting targets, whether it’s through Category Merchandising or Search, our traffic’s converting well. As we’ve found with all Nosto products, the time-saving piece has been instrumental. To be able to plug in rules and feel confident they’ll deliver the right results, and not have to constantly monitor and adapt them, has been a dream,” said Lee.

See how Gym + Coffee slashed time and effort by scaling Search performances with merchandising rules by reading the case study here. And although they couldn’t make it to the panel, SikSilk saw a 25% increase in CVR of search users and a significant decrease in site exits after implementing Search. You can check out their case study here. 

Here’s what went down in Sydney

And last but not least, we took everyone to the chapel in Sydney! Surrounded by tech partners and friends, the Sydney event was able to take a deeper, more technical look at our Search Product, with Adam Reiter, Nosto Head of Technical Solutions, Edward Sinclair, APAC Sales Leader, and Alina Marques, Senior Product Manager, joining the group. 

Together, we discussed with our partners how we could help merchants unlock the value of their search data to enrich all areas of the onsite personalization strategy. 

And what gave the Sydney event the edge? They had an incredible photo booth. 

And that’s a wrap 

We mingled with our partners, customers, clients, and friends on three different continents to celebrate one huge win, that is, the reshaping of product discovery.

So, we’d say that’s a wrap, but really we’re just getting started in 2023. To learn how you can drive product discovery with powerful and personalized ecommerce site search, book a demo.

The post We launched Search! Here’s everything you need to know from our events in NYC, London, and Sydney. appeared first on Nosto.

Q: What are you most looking forward to as Findologic joins Nosto?

Aino: Having more people to meet

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Aino: I tend to shy away from karaoke but I Ran by A Flock Of Seagulls or My Girl by The Temptations could probably get me up there

Q: Do you have any routines you use to improve your energy and focus?

Aino: A regular training schedule and lots of down-time when I’m not at work

Q: What are some of your favorite TV shows or movies?

Aino: When Harry Met Sally is my all-time favourite movie, I’m a sucker for a good romcom

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Aino: To listen with intent to understand, not intent to respond

Q: What emoji represents you and why?

Aino: ? because I love afternoon naps

The post Team Spotlight: Meet Aino at Nosto appeared first on Nosto.