https://innovateuk.blog.gov.uk/2017/08/07/machine-learning-solutions-for-retail-and-ecommerce/

Machine learning solutions for retail and eCommerce

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: digital economy, Emerging and enabling technologies, innovative UK businesses, User experience

The Filter are a Bath based software business who provide cutting-edge machine learning and AI solutions to the retail and media industry. Working with the likes of Liberty of London, MyMemory, Menkind and BT TV, our software presents customers and users with what they want to see, at every stage of their journey.

The Filter software in action on Liberty's website
The Filter software in action on Liberty's website

The business originated from the music and media sector and developed some of the first music playlisting and media recommendation engines on the market.

Today The Filter is a global player within the AI sector and still has a foot firmly within the entertainment industry but also heavily focused on developing machine learning solutions for retail and eCommerce.

Funding as way to accelerate project to market

Watch The Filter - Personalized Merchandising, Journey Optimization & Recommendations

The decision was made to apply for Innovate UK funding when we identified that the work we were doing on our Journey Optimisation functionality was a significant development in our platform and potentially a step change for the industry. An application for funding would allow us to accelerate the project to market and manage what is a very ambitious piece of work alongside our existing roadmap.

Personalising the purchasing journey

The Filter's console
The Filter's console

What we mean by Journey Optimisation is that we define a user's journey by stages: from research to discovery and finally through to purchase.

“By using machine learning to predict which stage a user is at and then personalising their onsite experience dependent on the stage, we can give them a much more compelling and useful shopping experience.”

We might do this by:

  • inspiring the user with content during the discovery stage
  • assisting them with alternatives and supporting information during the research phase
  • persuading them during the purchase phase by narrowing the choices and adding complementary products

Challenge: linking CMS and eCommerce platforms

However, currently, retailers struggle to seamlessly integrate their products and content within the customer journey, largely due to the marketing content being surfaced by a Content Management System and their products being surfaced by an eCommerce platform. Linking the two can be a time consuming and manual process.

The Filter solves this challenge & beyond with AI

The Filter platform already gives retailers the ability to control the automated linking of relevant content, based on contextual data and browser behaviour, to the relevant products and points in their journey.

But this project will take the functionality a lot further and apply a branch of machine learning known as deep learning, the type used by applications such as Google Translate and Amazon's Alexa.

Driving value through better customer experiences

We hope that delivering such innovation will set us further apart from our competition. Just like all businesses, our customers and prospects are looking for solutions that will give them an edge commercially. We're confident that this funding will continue to help us to help them deliver on that promise. The objective of this project (and everything we do) is to ultimately drive value for our clients through better customer experiences.

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