How Breville Looks to Drive Online Engagement With AI Search
Kitchen appliance manufacturer Breville has looked to artificial intelligence to bolster its e-commerce search engine, bringing an elevated experience to its 15 million global visitors.
To reach a wider audience, Breville has been expanding its content generation. The effort, however, introduced unexpected challenges in the company’s e-commerce product discovery, requiring a new search approach that could better map recipes to different appliances without compromising the consumer experience.
Before tapping AI, the company was using an open-source solution for search.
Tal Ball, chief technology officer of Breville, said a significant portion of the company’s engineering resources were being claimed by constant maintenance of the self-managed search system.
“Unfortunately, this allocation of resources hindered our ability to concentrate adequately on crafting meaningful customer experiences,” he said, adding that the transition to AI has helped redirect efforts to tasks that have a more substantial impact on the business.
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Now, using an API-first approach from Algolia, along with integrations with existing commerce and experience management systems, the company has been able to prioritize merchandising and make instant search updates.
The partnership has already yielded results, according to a shared statement from both companies. It has increased Breville’s visitor-to-order ratio — with one in five visitors making a purchase — and has allowed merchandising team members to focus on more strategic and commercial endeavors rather than manual tasks.
Breville is an established global brand founded 90 years ago. It now manufactures kitchen products for more than 70 countries, as is known as Sage Appliances in Europe.
