What is CONSTRUCTOR?
Constructor (part of the MACH Alliance) is an AI-powered search and discovery platform for enterprise e-commerce businesses.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What is Constructor?
Constructor is an AI-powered platform designed for e-commerce search and product discovery. The solution specializes in helping eCommerce businesses improve their product discovery experience by personalizing search results and recommendations for each customer. This is done using machine learning (ML) and customer data to understand what shoppers are looking for and show them the most relevant search results.
Forrester Research named Constructor a “Strong Performer” in "The Forrester Wave™: Commerce Search And Product Discovery, Q3 2023." It was also ranked the highest in the “Strategy Category” among other top commerce search and product discovery vendors.
Core features of Constructor include Search, Browse, Recommendations, Quizzes, Merchant controls and intelligence, and more.
Who uses Constructor?
Several enterprise companies use Constructor to improve customer experience and average order value (AOV). Here are two of it's case studies:
Bonobos: Bonobos is a menswear clothing brand with its signature line of better-fitting men’s pants. Constructor outperformed Bonobos's previous search platform by 9% in search revenue while also increasing browse conversions by 6%, recommendation conversions by 92%, and recommendation average value by 22%. Read the case study here.
Target Australia: Target Australia is a large department store in Australia. After incorporating Constructor into its eCommerce business, Target Australia achieved a +9% increase in search revenue, $13M (AUD) in search revenue, -93 % in bounce rate, and more. Read the case study here.
Why is Constructor good for eCommerce businesses?
AI-powered Search: Constructor goes beyond basic keyword matching. It uses AI and machine learning to understand searcher intent, even for complex or misspelled queries. This means shoppers are more likely to find the products they're looking for, reducing frustration and cart abandonment.
Contextual and Personalized Results: Constructor Search delivers personalized and relevant results for every query. It works with user behavior and data to ensure that customers find what they need quickly and easily.
Advanced Functionality: The platform offers off-the-shelf advanced functionalities, including features and support for API-first architecture, composability, and headless integrations. With these features, eCommerce businesses enjoy faster time-to-market and flexibility in implementation.
Built for Enterprise Ecommerce: Unlike outdated legacy search platforms, Constructor is specifically built for enterprise e-commerce. It focuses on business KPIs, personalized experiences, and strategic agility, removing the limitations of traditional keyword-based search engines with its vector-based approach.
White-glove support: A notable benefit of Constructor, based on numerous customer reviews, is its reliable support team. The Constructor’s support team is always quick to respond and help with queries. The customer support team swiftly assists with implementation, optimization, and other requirements businesses may have.
Core Features of Constructor
Now, here are the features and offerings of Constructor.
Introducing Constructor’s Native Commerce Core™
At the heart of Constructor search and e-commerce product discovery platform is its core product, “Constructor’s Native Commerce Core™”. It is powered by AI/large language models (LLMs), advanced algorithms, and transformers. It uses clickstream and customers’ behaviour on the website as important indicators to help improve overall search and product discovery experience.
Constructor uses a blend of core features, algorithms, and models to personalize and determine product rankings. These ranking factors are categorized into three groups:
Source: Constructor
Group attractiveness: This method ranks products by considering the conversions generated from overall clickstream data. It identifies current trends and relies on products with a history of being successful.
Item attractiveness: These algorithms rank products based on what appeals to a specific user, using data from their clicks on the site.
Base score: This score reflects a product's popularity over the past 30 days across the entire site. Essentially, it measures how well a product converted based on site-wide data, and assigns it a score. All these scores are dynamically calculated to optimize for a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), and merchants can monitor the scoring models through their dashboard tools.
Features of Constructor’s Native Commerce Core™
Search: Constructor’s search feature is powered by AI and has powerful search capabilities such as content search, voice search, image search, and multilingual support.
Constructor also offers spell correction, typo tolerance, and searchability functionality that lets you configure which product data is searchable.
Browsing: A unique feature/advantage of Constructor over competitors is that it also focuses on improving customer browsing experiences. It does this by adapting browsing pages to match the preferences of each unique visitor. Constructors’ browsing features include boosting, burying, slotting, blocklisting, facet redirects, and more.
Recommendations: The ecommerce recommendation engine from Constructor currently provides nine varieties of result types:
Complementary: Suggests products frequently bought alongside or related to the item a shopper sees or has in their cart.
Bundles: Aims to present products likely to be purchased together with the main item on a product detail page.
Alternative: Offers similar products, useful for guiding shoppers through numerous options with a tailored selection.
Filtered: This option displays products based on specific preset attributes, refining recommendations to items similar to the one being viewed.
Best Sellers: Highlights the most popular items within a defined timeframe, encouraging exploration at the top of the purchasing funnel.
User Featured: Presents products based on individual user behaviors and preferences, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Recently Viewed: Shows products previously viewed by the shopper, facilitating easy access to previous items or continuation of a browsing session.
Abandoned in Cart: Recommends items left in the cart by shoppers, encouraging completion of the purchase.
Query Recommendations: Provide product suggestions when shoppers encounter a zero-results page. This will enhance the browsing experience by displaying items other shoppers engaged with after making the same query.
Quizzes: Another unique selling point of Constructor, which I haven’t seen in competitors, is its built-in e-commerce Quiz Builder. The Quiz Builder aims to help merchandisers gain deeper individual customer insights for more informed decisions. In the image above, you can see a set of quiz questions aimed at finding out about a customer's favorite lipstick color.
Merchant Controls and Intelligence: The Constructor Merchant Controls and Intelligence feature is part of the company's enterprise product discovery tools. This feature is more of an advanced AI-powered analytical tool that helps merchants gather valuable data and insights from customers’ interactions with their e-commerce websites.
Merchant Intelligence offers two very useful tools for merchandisers:
A/B testing: A merchandiser can use A/B testing to simultaneously test/evaluate one global search rule and one global browse rule. The performance of each test can be tracked through a dashboard, allowing the user to determine the best time to end the test.
Rule Performance: Rule Performance provides analytical insights beyond testing. This helps users comprehend the effectiveness of slotted positions across different pages compared to when they were not slotted.
Source: Constructor
Attribute Enrichment: Constructor’s Attribute Enrichment feature uses a blend of AI and ML to automatically generate and improove product data attributes. Constructors Attribute Enrichment feature automatically adds useful tags and categories to a customer's products. It also provides inputs to other systems like Product Information Management (PIM) platforms. The Attribute Enrichment engine uses advanced ML/DL methods to predict product categories and attributes from image, text, and clickstream data.
Source: Constructor
The screenshot above showcases a user-friendly dashboard that allows merchandisers to access a comprehensive view of all items/products and their variations. Each item is linked with its distinct attribute values, enabling merchandisers to remove or adjust any irrelevant values.
Read more about how Constructor handles Attribute Enrichment.
Constructor’s AI Shopping Assistant (ASA): Constructor’s AI shopping Assistant is one of the company’s most impressive features for seamless customer product discovery. Constructor joined the “conversational commerce” trend with this feature, allowing for a more interactive shopping experience for customers.
ASA empowers buyers to create and send detailed requests and interact in a discussion-like manner to obtain product suggestions that are contextually relevant, personalized, and match the site's live inventory.
For instance, you can ask ASA, ‘I am looking for the best-fitting dress for a wedding I am attending soon,’ and it will make suggestions based on your query.
Additionally, ASA offers assistance for various types of results, such as articles, guides, and multimedia content, through a user-friendly interface.
The feature is relatively new, so I expect Constructor to make improvements as time goes on.
Support
Constructor provides several helpful support and resource materials such as blogs, e-books, whitepapers, videos, and a dedicated API-documentation page for complex use cases. The support team is also very quick and helpful in most cases.
Pricing
Constructor doesn’t have its pricing structure/details publicly available, so you have to talk with the sales or support team to get a tailored price. Alternatively, you can book a demo to see how the platform works and how it can help your business. Then, you can decide to move forward and get a pricing quote.
WHAT DO USERS SAY?
Conclusion
Constructor stands out as a leading AI-first platform that enhances ecommerce search and product discovery experiences. Unique features like the AI Shopping Assistant (ASA) differentiate Constructor by providing customers an interactive and personalized shopping experience.
To learn more about how Hamari can help with your search and merchandising implementation, contact us.
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