For over 58 years, West Marine has been the go-to destination for water sports, fishing, and boating enthusiasts. Serving water lovers of all kinds means catering to a broad spectrum of customers from first-time boat owners who need step-by-step guidance to seasoned captains searching for exact, highly technical replacement parts.
To serve both audiences online, West Marine needed a digital storefront that mirrored the deep product knowledge and five-star service of its in-store associates. When a customer walks into a West Marine store, they’re greeted by an expert who helps them find exactly what they need. By replacing rigid keyword rules with AI-native search and autonomous shopping agents on its ecommerce site, the brand transformed digital discovery to drive higher conversions without overwhelming its digital commerce teams.
Historically, complex search required thousands of manual rules
Ecommerce search in specialized retail comes with unique hurdles. Boaters often search using specific part numbers, local marine lingo, or situational questions. Traditional keyword search engines struggle to connect these queries with catalog items, frequently displaying empty search pages. To bridge the gap, West Marine’s digital team spent hundreds of hours creating manual redirect rules, synonyms, and search overrides. Product recommendations also required the setup of manual, product-by-product assignments, turning routine merchandising into a full-time operational bottleneck.
“Our major complaint from customers was empty search results,” shares Deanna Christy, Senior Director of Ecommerce and Digital Experience at West Marine. “To fix that, we had to constantly put in rules to catch this.” The process was painstakingly manual and tedious for the ecommerce team.
Standard site navigation presented another obstacle. Even though key product attributes existed in the catalog backend, standard search filters failed to pull them through effectively. West Marine needed a solution that understood true customer intent out-of-the-box, without requiring an endless list of manual rules.
“When we onboarded our previous search tool, the sheer volume of manual rules and configurations we had to manage behind the scenes was exhausting. When we moved to Agentic Commerce Search, I said, ‘This is AI, let the AI work.’”
The Solution: Intent-Aware Search and an AI Digital Concierge
West Marine modernized its online discovery experience by implementing Agentic Commerce Search alongside Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2C Commerce. Instead of relying on strict keyword matches, Agentic Commerce Search uses a custom Small Language Model (SLM). Built on West Marine’s catalog and shopper behavior data and augmented by simulating millions of synthetic shopper journeys, the model deeply grasps context, marine terminology, and shopper intent. Here’s how intent-aware, agentic search drives more revenue and improves the customer experience for West Marine:
Streamlined discovery and merchandising
Search results now interpret anything a customer might be looking for, whether its conversational phrasing from a first-time boater looking for a life raft to exact part numbers from a returning customer. Category pages dynamically generate navigation filters that are relevant to the search. For instance, if a customer searches for a “life raft”, one of West Marine’s most purchased items, Agentic Commerce Search automatically creates relevant filters, such as “Coast Guard Approved” or warranty details, straight from backend attributes. Additionally, the AI automatically surfaces real-time “frequently bought together” product recommendations on item pages, instantly creating product bundles. No manual configuration needed.
For Christy, the difference is night and day: “Now, the AI does everything for us. We no longer have to manually configure search and recommendations or constantly touch the system, freeing up our team’s time. We saw an uplift starting on day one.”
Hyper-personalized, contextual online shopping experiences
To replicate the hands-on expertise found in physical stores, West Marine launched Skipper, an interactive AI Shopper Agent. The team trained Skipper using the institutional knowledge of store associates who assist customers on handheld devices in-store, giving it the expertise of our internal store associates. Online shoppers can now consult Skipper directly to ask open-ended questions, check safety compliance, or get tailored product advice throughout their shopping journey.
“Skipper is such a huge win for us. Our customers run the gamut from first-time boat owners who don’t know what they need to customers looking for an exact part for their make and model,” explains Deanna. “If you ever go into our stores, all of our associates are knowledge experts. We brought that in-store associate online. Now, every customer can use the Skipper as the shopping assistant across the site.”
Results snapshot: higher conversions and operational scale
By letting Agentic Commerce Search and Skipper manage the search and discovery experience, West Marine unlocked immediate performance gains and freed up critical team resources:
- +8.5% Conversion Uplift: Customers interacting with Agentic Commerce Search drove an 8.5% increase in conversion to sales within the first month.
- 97% Reduction in Manual Search Rules: The ecommerce team eliminated almost all manual search overrides, allowing AI to handle queries dynamically while eliminating empty result pages.
- 2x Conversion Rate with Skipper: Shoppers engaging with the Skipper AI agent convert at twice the rate of standard site traffic.
- Automated Merchandising: Cross-sell carousels and accessory bundles now build automatically across SKU pages, saving hours of manual labor.
West Marine sets the standard for the digital customer experience
By moving away from standard keyword search, West Marine empowers its customers to find exactly what they need while saving its ecommerce team precious time. Next, the brand plans to connect its digital and physical channels by using geo-detection within search. This feature will identify a customer’s location and surface relevant products available at their local store for buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) orders.
West Marine also plans to evolve Skipper into a unified agent experience. Soon, the digital assistant will answer detailed service questions, allowing customers to easily check their shipping status or review return policies in the same chat window. By treating AI as a true digital associate, West Marine proves that the most successful ecommerce experiences are conversational, intelligent, and built around the customer.
Turn search queries into revenue
Get more details about how West Marine uses Agentic Commerce Search to turn product curiosity into conversions.
