Case study how simple recommendation techniques improve user experience in e-Commerce [Emilio Carrión @ MercadonaTech]

Emilio Carrión (MercadonaTech) wrote a blog post about how simple recommendations to substitute ‘ghost’ products improve conversion rate and user experience. He defines ‘ghost’ products as items that are available at the time a user adds them to the shopping cart, but are not available any more when the user proceeds to check-out.

It seems Emilio is planning on a whole series of blog post, the first one being published a few weeks ago

1. Recommendations I — A scary tale about vanishing ghosts
2. Recommendations II — A twisted tale about twin products (not yet available)
3. Recommendations III — A flavored tale about similar tastes (not yet available)
4. Recommendations IV — A frustrating tale about infrastructure hardships (not yet available)

Here an excerpt of the blog post:

In this first article we will talk about how a logistic problem that affected thousands of customers every month was solved with a simple implementation that brought quick value and a great purchasing experience improvement.

[…]

To give some results we currently have a 28% conversion rate. That means that nearly 1 every 3 products that are checked to be substituted are swapped by a similar one.

https://medium.com/mercadona-tech/recomendations-i-a-scary-tale-about-vanishing-ghosts-35c69aa389be