Challenge

Becoming a market leader didn’t come without its challenges for Yaga.With thousands of products being added to the platform each day, showing customers relevant product recommendations across the customer journey is critical for success. But, because Yaga is a marketplace for second-hand clothes, every product shown on the site is unique, meaning there’s little to no user data to inform product recommendations. ‍ Yaga’s in-house system struggled with product recommendations, resulting in poor performance. The purchasing experience tended to be irrelevant, meaning customers sped through browsing and weren’t adding products to the cart. Yaga’s investment in advertising was also falling flat, as the lack of relevant product recommendations impacted the revenue each purchase was generating. With these in-house technology shortcomings, Yaga was also wary about pursuing their plans of growth and expansion to other markets while facing operational issues.

Solution

Yaga resolved to find a product recommendation solution better suited for their business goals. When scouting, they came across Depict, who helped reputable brands like aim'n, Gina Tricot, and Houdini delivers a personalized E-commerce experience. ‍ Depict’s proposed offering a tailored AI E-commerce experience using a personalization engine that can showcase the most relevant products even without historical data to inform product recommendations. Implementing new technology is a big decision for any business, so Yaga put the shortlisted vendors through various selection filters to make sure the new solution outperforms their previous in-house product recommendation solution. This included running an A/B test measuring the number of products added to carts via product recommendations.