Central Department Store revamps their online customer experience, doubles conversions across its 69 million product catalog

Algolia, the world's only end-to-end AI Search and Discovery platform, today announced that Central Online, the e-commerce platform of Central Department Store (a subsidiary of Central Retail Corporation (CRC), a multi-format retail, real-estate, and hospitality conglomerate with operations across Asia and Europe), has significantly enhanced its customer experience through the implementation of Algolia’s AI Search platform to better understand shoppers and show them what they need from an extensive catalog of 69 million products.

The decision to move to Algolia was driven by Central Department Store’s commitment to delivering fast, relevant, and intuitive search experiences for its online customers. Central Online’s digital marketing team identified an opportunity to enhance search functionality by embracing Algolia’s cutting-edge AI capabilities and user-friendly interface. For example, the team is now using Algolia’s AI-powered Dynamic Re-Ranking feature to find trends in user behavior and improve relevance by boosting popular search results.

Kunapas Thongpiam, Head of Search & Onsite Optimization, Central Online, said: “We’re always striving to push the boundaries of agility and innovation for our customers; this quest led us to Algolia. Customers can now search through millions of our products and find what they love in milliseconds, regardless of search queries or language.”

As part of its ambitious omnichannel, digital transformation and re-platforming to Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Commerce, Central Online successfully migrated from Elasticsearch to Algolia’s AI Search platform to enhance search, browsing, and product discovery across its massive catalog. The migration, executed in collaboration with Algolia’s Technical Team, was seamless and efficient, integrating effortlessly into Central Department Store’s broader digital transformation initiatives.

Central Online adopted Algolia’s Search, Browse, and Product Carousels creation capabilities, along with advanced features such as InstantSearch, Query Suggestions, Dynamic Re-ranking, Rules, and Dynamic Filters. With these features, Central Online has streamlined its user interactions and enhanced the digital shopping experience.

Thongpiam added: “Before using Algolia’s Dynamic Re-ranking, our search results were repetitive and primarily based on price. Now, with Dynamic Re-ranking, we have transformed our search experience, offering highly relevant results that we could never achieve manually. Importantly, we have found the Algolia AI Search platform to be far more user-friendly for a non-tech person or a business unit—what used to take us hours and days, is now a simple 5-minute set-up.”

Working closely with Algolia, Central Department Store also addressed the unique challenge of processing Thai language search queries, which often lack spaces between words. Leveraging Algolia’s AI capabilities, namely Natural Language Processing (NLP), Central Online can now accurately parse and improve search relevance for Thai queries with tokenization.

Michelle Adams, President of Field Operations, Algolia said: “Central Group’s commitment to innovation and exceptional customer experiences aligns perfectly with Algolia’s mission. We’re proud to be their AI search platform of choice and excited to see how our collaboration continues to elevate their e-commerce strategy.”

To sign up for a demo of Algolia’s end-to-end AI, go to: https://www.algolia.com/demorequest/.

Read the full case study here to learn more about Algolia and Central Group’s partnership and the retailer’s AI-driven journey to higher conversions and enhanced customer engagement.

About Algolia

Algolia is a leading provider of AI search solutions, serving over 18,000 businesses and 500,000 developers globally. Renowned for its user-friendly API-First platform and the fastest AI search technology, Algolia is the largest hosted search engine, trusted by businesses and developers for 1.75 trillion searches per year. Backed by a decade of innovation, expertise, and growth, Algolia continuously redefines the search landscape with its commitment to user-friendly solutions, significant scalability, and unmatched speed. Learn more: www.algolia.com

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