Hepsiburada teams up with Toloka and makes product search as easy as it gets with Azure-based solution

Envision the exhilaration of a shopper when their product search unlocks the perfect find – this is the realm of retail where Turkish Hepsiburada aimed for nothing short of excellence. To revolutionize its search capabilities for the millions of products available on its e-commerce platform, Turkish Hepsiburada teamed up with Toloka and developed a solution based on Microsoft Azure. The result was a 9-percent increase in search quality. Hepsiburada is now one of the leading Turkish e-commerce platforms.

In 1998, five visionaries began Hepsiburada in a humble studio flat, aiming to supply the growing demands of the information technology (IT) hardware market. Today, Hepsiburada stands as one of the largest, fastest growing and leading e-commerce platforms in Türkiye. Hepsiburada’s platform, which began with a handful of tech products, now boasts over 195 million stock keeping units (SKUs) from more than 101,000 vendors. "About 12 million active customers access to our vast product range monthly through our application. This application provides not only a marketplace, but also financial services, express delivery, ticketing, and more." shares Alexey Shevenkov, Chief Technology Officer at Hepsiburada.

Imagine yourself searching for a product and instantly finding it. Not just any product, but the right one which is also trusted and popular with other shoppers. That's the seamless experience we aim to offer at Hepsiburada.

— Alexey Shevenkov, CTO, Hepsiburada

"We had an ambitious goal to provide our customers the best online shopping experience ever," shares Shevenkov. But the effectiveness of search quality can make or break the retail experience. When a customer looks for a product and it isn't available, that’s disappointing. When the product is available, but not easily found due to subpar search results, that frustrates a customer. So Shevenkov knew that goal wouldn’t be realized without truly understanding the behavior of users on the platform. "Imagine yourself searching for a product and instantly finding it. Not just any product, but the right one which is also trusted and popular with other shoppers. That's the seamless experience we aim to offer at Hepsiburada," he says.

Recognizing that when it comes to navigating the intricate web of e-commerce, two heads — or in this case, companies — are better than one, Hepsiburada sought the expertise of Toloka, a technology trailblazer known for its expertise in enhancing machine learning processes with human insights.

Revolutionizing retail search together

To leverage the direct relationship between search quality and conversion rates, Toloka helped Hepsiburada design a tool to regularly evaluate search performance and measure a wider range of metrics. "Relying on metrics like quantity of orders and clicks are limited to only identifying things like popular products. We wanted additional metrics that would enable us to know what customers need and offer that to them even before they click on something," explains Shevenkov.

To enhance conversions from searches, Toloka proposed to construct search metrics, which would not only train their machine learning models in the future but also routinely assess search performance. "Our method considers not just standard metrics but also customer preferences, knowledge, requirements, product popularity, and more, to determine the most efficient search system," says Olga Megorskaya, CEO at Toloka.

Toloka’s platform runs on Microsoft Azure. "All our labeling, models, demos, and related tasks run through Azure—without it, none of this would be possible," shares Megorskaya.

All our labeling, models, demos, and related tasks run through Azure — without it, none of this would be possible.

— Olga Megorskaya, CEO, Toloka

By blending online user behavior data with offline labeling signals, Hepsiburada can discern genuine user intent beyond just clicks. It implemented the solution across their marketplace to support quick shipping, vertical browsing, and other features.

Better search results leading to higher conversion rate

The search experience has improved for customers with more accurate results. Hepsiburada meticulously identified and resolved common e-commerce issues like incorrect product sorting and incorrect category predictions, both of which account for 8.3 percent and 15 percent of search failures respectively. "We’ve achieved a 9-percent increase in search quality. This, in turn, has boosted the search conversion rate," Shevenkov proudly shares.

Another tool Hepsiburada deployed is competitor comparison. Through crowdsourcing, Hepsiburada and Toloka labeled search results for random queries. "This allows us to gauge our search quality vis-à-vis our competitors," elaborates Shevenkov. "We've already observed an 8 percent improvement in measured relevance, which correlates with increase in sales and customer satisfaction."

As the journey from search to purchase becomes more seamless, Hepsiburada keeps thinking of ways to enhance the customer experience. "In the realm of e-commerce, metrics play a pivotal role. By utilizing the right metrics and collaborating with the right partners, retailers can embark on a cycle of constant improvement. Then, for the shopper, we deliver an even better, seamless shopping journey," concludes Shevenkov.

We’ve achieved a 9-percent increase in search quality. This, in turn, has boosted the search conversion rate.

— Alexey Shevenkov, CTO, Hepsiburada

The content of this article was originally posted on Microsoft Customer Stories.