Temple & Webster Lifts Add-to-Cart Rate by 32% with Marqo’s AI-powered Search
Company Overview
Temple & Webster is Australia’s leading online retailer for furniture, home décor, and home improvement products. With over 200,000 SKUs spanning indoor and outdoor furniture, lighting, rugs, and appliances, the platform serves hundreds of thousands of customers annually across Australia.As a pure-play eCommerce business, Temple & Webster’s on-site search and discovery experience is central to customer engagement, product discovery, and transaction conversion — particularly for high-consideration, style-driven purchases like furniture.
Challenge
With a rapidly growing product catalog and increasing consumer expectations for fast, intuitive search experiences, Temple & Webster’s traditional keyword-based search engine was falling short in several areas:
Limited ability to interpret style, design era, or aesthetic preferences
mid-century modern armchairboho chic lampPoor handling of vague, descriptive, or typo-prone queries
cosy reading chairInability to surface complementary or visually similar products, limiting upsell and cross-sell opportunities
Subpar mobile search experiences with high abandonment rates
The business needed a smarter, more flexible product discovery solution to increase add-to-cart rates, average order value, and reduce search-driven drop-offs.
Solution
In early 2024, Temple & Webster integrated Marqo, an AI-native vector search engine designed for product discovery and eCommerce merchandising. In a matter of weeks:
Marqo replaced the site’s legacy keyword search system on both desktop and mobile experiences
AI-powered semantic search enabled customers to find relevant products based on style, material, and design intent — not just exact word matches
Visual search and vector embeddings were introduced to surface visually similar products and suggest complementary items
Personalization was layered in, adapting search results to individual preferences based on browsing and purchasing behavior
Results
After an 8-week A/B test involving 20% of site traffic, Temple & Webster achieved substantial improvements across key commercial and customer experience metrics:
32%+
32% increase in add-to-cart rate for style-driven and descriptive queries
2.9%↑
2.9% lift in average order value driven by improved complementary product suggestions and upsells
Higher mobile engagement
Higher mobile engagement through faster, more intuitive semantic search experiences
Reduced search abandonment
Reduced search abandonment and bounce rates, particularly on high-intent product category pages
What This Means
For an eCommerce retailer like Temple & Webster, where style, visual similarity, and discovery are essential to conversion, traditional keyword search simply wasn’t enough.
By implementing Marqo’s AI-native vector search, the company:
Delivered a far more intuitive, natural product discovery experience
Increased both product conversion and total order value
Reduced friction on mobile, where search expectations are highest
And future-proofed its merchandising strategy by enabling AI-powered product recommendations and visual discovery — all with a fast, lightweight implementation and minimal ongoing management.
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