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The History and (Data) Science of Commerce

EliseB
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Title: The History and (Data) Science of Commerce
Company: Hush
Collaborators: Laurence Wong, VP of Data Science at Hush, Elise Breda, Technical Writer at Alteryx

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Overview of Use Case
 
Top U.S. social commerce app and beauty retailer, Hush, uses data science algorithms to provide users with curated social and product feeds. The Hush data science team had to find a way to embed their complex Python models into their mobile app without time-intensive and error prone recoding. Hush uses Alteryx Promote to expose their models as REST API endpoints and productionize their work. Hush has saved hundreds of hours of data scientists’ time and seen a three times increase in sales from just one of their predictive models.
 
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Describe the business challenge or problem you needed to solve
 
Early in the 20th century, Austrian architect Victor Gruen recognized that throughout history, trade has always been about more than the acquisition of goods. Whether casually strolling the Greek Agora or aimlessly meandering a Turkish bazaar, Gruen noticed that there was something inherently satisfying and deeply communal about browsing beautiful things. The modern shopping mall was born.
 
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Fast forward one hundred years. Brick and mortar stores are closing their doors, unable to compete with online retailers. Americans are spending over $400 billion a year on e-commerce, yet the experience of shopping online is largely transactional, devoid of human interaction and emotion. Is the storied history of social commerce dead?
 
“Absolutely not,” says Laurence Wong, Vice President of Data Science at Hush.
 
As the top social commerce app in the United States, Hush is obsessed with bringing Gruen’s keen insights to the digital world.
 
Most e-commerce retailers have focused on building search-based marketplaces, which are ideal for functional purchases. For more emotional purchases, however, people tend to prefer an engaging experience, akin to casually window shopping with a friend. That’s where Hush comes in.
robin-worrall-749755-unsplash.jpg“We noticed that people now use their phones exactly like they used to use shopping malls–skimming curated feeds without specific intent, interacting with others as they go. It just so happens that they are scrolling, not strolling,” explains Laurence. Based on that observation, Hush invested heavily in becoming a mobile-first online retailer. As a mobile-first retailer, we are positioned to provide users with an exceptional shopping experience. We apply the insights we glean about users’ product tastes and shopping preferences to curate the in-app experience of each customer.
 
 
 
The Hush team also deeply believes that shopping is a social experience. “A lot of purchases are experiential and emotional. That’s especially true for beauty products, which is our focus. People want to interact and talk with like-minded about what they’re trying.” Based on that knowledge, Hush built a proprietary social feed directly into their app, which is updated constantly based on user behavior.
 
“Using data science and analytics, we are able to provide abundantly more than an in-person shopping experience,” says Laurence. Behind Hush’s glossy app and social feed, dozens of data science models are running 24/7, providing users with personalized product recommendations, customized discounted bundles, and interactive reward opportunities. Each data science model is deployed and managed using Alteryx.
 
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“As a manager, I’m constantly asking myself how I can increase the influence and productivity of my team. What is one lever I can pull to make sure all of the amazing work they’re doing gets out there? "One of the first levers I pulled was getting the team to use Alteryx," recalls Laurence. “I was familiar with the platform from my previous employer and started thinking about implementing it as soon as I joined."
 
“Our team built all of these incredible predictive models using Python, but desperately needed a way to embed them into our mobile app. Each model would have taken weeks to rewrite into a back-end web-application language, and neither the data science nor the engineering teams had expertise in both environments.
 
Describe your working solution
 
“Alteryx solves the problem of productionizing our data science models. We upload our code to Alteryx and immediately get back a snippet that our developers can embed into our app.
 
“Our models are exposed as a standard REST API endpoint, so there’s no need for recoding or messy handoffs between teams. We basically hand our developers our models on a silver platter,” Laurence jokes.  
“I think our most impressive accomplishment is how we’ve transformed our push notifications with real-time machine learning. If you think about it, our ‘store’ is within our users’ reach 24 hours a day. How do we stay relevant when they’re not in the app? Initially, we sent all of our users the same systematic push notifications. Some people loved them. Others found them irrelevant or even annoying."
 
“When we looked at the data, we had an epiphany. Our models should ‘learn’ how a user feels and behaves, what they engage with, what they dismiss, their preferred time of day to browse, and so on. We created models that constantly refine their understanding of your preferences and customize your experience accordingly."
 
“Our team deployed dynamic push notification models into our mobile app in less than ten minutes using the Alteryx platform. That means a more relevant, engaging shopping experience for over 1 million users."
 
Describe the benefits you have achieved
 
“We’ve seen a three times increase in sales from this Alteryx use case alone,” explains Laurence. “And that’s really just scratching the surface. We have dozens of other models hosted on the platform as well. With Alteryx, our data science team can spend their time doing what they love, rather than worrying about whether their models will ever see the light of day."
  
“At Hush, we recognize that commerce and community have always gone hand in hand. Alteryx empowers us to provide 21st century consumers the engaging, intelligent, social experience that they deserve.”
 
Related Resources
Download the full PDF case study here
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