“Have you ever been on your phone, using the trusty old Search bar, but unable to find a product you were just looking at yesterday?” It’s a common problem that most online shoppers face and Salesforce has at least a partial solution.

The question and solution were addressed in a blog post today by Dr. Rama Ramakrishnan, who serves as Senior VP of Data Science for the Salesforce Commerce Cloud division.

A typical scenario, suggests Dr. Ramakrishnan: “You were probably on the go, between meetings or waiting for a friend, with limited time. So you abandoned your search, coming away empty handed without the product you know is there somewhere.”

The result? Frustration for you as a buyer and lost opportunity for the seller.

“Global retailers facing this problem every day. This pain point is exactly why smart site search and Artificial Intelligence are so crucial to the future of retail, especially on mobile,” writes Dr. Ramakrishnan.

Fast, Accurate Search Is Critical

According to Salesforce’s Shopping Index, an average mobile e-commerce shopping session lasts just 5 or 6 minutes. That means efficient site-search tools are critically important because online shoppers — especially on mobile devices — need to find the products they want quickly.

Salesforce says consumers who use search to find the products they want are 2.4 times more likely to buy than shoppers who don’t search, and they also drive more revenue, spending 2.6x more.

The bottom line is that retailers can dramatically increase their sales by giving online shoppers more efficient search tools.

Artificial Intelligence Can Help

So, how can product searches be made more efficient? Salesforce says it is using the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to enable smarter searching on sites that use its Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Its “Einstein” search capabilities give e-commerce teams better tools on the back-end of e-tail sites to produce…