How to understand visitors shopping intent

Session Intent helps you show relevant products to your visitors

As an e-commerce store, you must have had this thought several times: How can I make sure my visitors find what they're looking for? There is of course no single answer to that question, but relevance plays a big part in it. Presenting relevant products to visitors based on what they're looking for. But how do you know what your visitors are looking for? By analysing the visitor's intentions.

Most visitors already have intentions in mind before they visit your e-commerce business. Perhaps they're looking for a new TV or a stylish pair of sunglasses. When they browse your site and click on the "TV" category or search for "sunglasses", they've given the first clue as to what they're looking for. That's the start of a function we call "Session Intent" which, along with the personalisation function, presents relevant products to each unique visitor. 

Sophisticated learning in three layers

There are many factors affecting your visitors' experience. Interaction design, navigation, loading times, etc. But finding relevant products is one of the most important factors for a satisfactory experience. Visitors mainly use the search function and other product exposure as aids to help them find the right products and this is the context in which Session Intent is able to shine. 

In order for Session Intent to work, you need a sophisticated AI model that can form the basis for all product exposure and ranking within your e-commerce business. At Loop54, we have created our own AI model in which, simply put, learning takes place in three layers. First and foremost, we have the accumulated learning that we obtain from all visitors within the e-commerce business. The next layer is where the model learns each visitor's personal preferences. Such as a specific person wanting to see lactose-free milk when searching for "milk" or preferring a specific brand. In the final layer, we find Session Intent, which forms an important part of the personalisation, where the AI model learns the visitor's intentions in his or her current visit. For example, if a visitor clicks on "loudspeakers" in the navigation function, we are quickly able to understand his or her intentions and adjust the product listings accordingly. Intentions can also change during the course of the visit and the AI model then quickly adapts.

By using both long-duration processes (personal preferences) and short-duration processes (Session Intent), we can adapt the results according to the visitor's personal preferences while quickly adjusting the results based on his or her current intentions. 

Satisfied customers and better conversion

As far as visitors are concerned, our goal with Session Intent is to ensure that they find the products they're looking for with minimal effort. It is of course important no matter what device the visitor uses, but the margins are even tighter when it comes to visitors from mobile devices. In addition to a limited screen size, 5–6 inches, mobile visitors also tend to use more general search terms than they would if they were sitting at a PC. That means that the search results and the product listings must be in excellent shape in order to exceed the visitor's expectations.

As an e-retailer, it's not just visitors who benefit from your use of the Session Intent function. Our customers using Session Intent along with personalisation functions have increased their conversion rates by 3–4% as a direct consequence of more relevant search results and product listings. In other words, making use of the visitor's intentions is an excellent tool for increasing conversions. A function that also looks after itself.