Building an Open and Free Commerce Ecosystem with Google’s Bill Ready

Paul Lewis:
Hello and welcome to the Retail Rundown podcast. I’m your host, Paul Lewis. Joining me today is my guest Bill Ready. Bill is the president of Google Commerce, where he leads Google’s commerce business, which includes shopping, travel, and Lens, along with Google’s payments and emerging markets businesses. Before joining Google, Bill was the chief operating officer at PayPal responsible for product, technology, engineering, and end-customer experiences. And chaired PayPal’s operating group, which was responsible for delivering on revenue and profit goals for the company globally. Previously, Bill was CEO of Braintree and Venmo building both from early-stage startups to industry leaders, which were ultimately acquired by PayPal. He also served as executive in residence at Excel Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital and growth equity firm, as president of iPay Technologies, where he guided the company through a period of rapid growth and subsequent sale, and worked as a strategy consultant for McKinsey and company. Welcome to the show, Bill.

Bill Ready:
Thanks for having me, Paul. It’s great to be here.

Paul Lewis:
So let’s start with some broad strokes. What are some of the biggest shifts in consumer behavior that are having such an impact on global commerce these days?

Bill Ready:
Well, as we all know the pandemic has been a catalyst of a number of key consumer trends. It’s accelerated shopping behaviors, which were already underway, but went through periods of tremendous growth. And we think that many of these are here to stay. And I’d say three key trends that we’re seeing and watching closely. The first is that more consumers are turning to digital for inspiration. So US consumers now spend more time online than ever before. In fact, on average, US adults are spending almost eight hours per day on digital media. And it’s where shoppers are discovering new products and finding inspiration. In fact, we’ve seen a 60% increase in Google image searches for ideas, and we have more than a billion shopping sessions happen across Google every day. So there’s more opportunities than ever before to connect with potential customers at key moments across their purchase journey.

Bill Ready:
The second is that people are looking for a more visual inspirational shopping experience. The last year has shown us that while shoppers have increasingly turned to digital for their shopping needs, they missed the in-person browsing experience. They miss the experience to be able to walk through a store and browse for ideas, walk through a shopping mall. And digital has increasingly become a place where people look for inspiration and ideas, and it’s no longer just a destination for a quick transaction or the thing that you know you need. It’s a place where you’re looking to sort of walk the Bazaar and be inspired. And so to do that, we see a need for more visual shopping experiences, shopping from images, shopping from videos, shopping a screenshot, or a browsable experience when you’re shopping on search.

Bill Ready:
And then the third that we’re seeing is shopping isn’t only online or offline. It’s becoming a blend of both. The consumer shopping journey has blended into a hybrid online-offline experience in the last 18+ months. Increasingly, online experiences inform offline purchases. For example, we know that people want the confidence of knowing an item is on the shelf before they head out to the store. In fact, 52% of US consumers who were planning to shop for the holidays say they’ll confirm online that the item is in stock before going to buy it in the store. So consumers have come to expect and rely on the flexibility and ease of the information that they get in the digital environment even as they go back into physical environments. They want that same information at their fingertips, that same digital assistant with them through the shopping journey. The rapidly closing stores, increased safety concerns, all these things led to an increase in adoption of these digitally-enabled services, such as curbside pickup, same-day delivery.

Bill Ready:
And so we’ve seen a huge pickup in demand for things like curbside pickup. It increased by 3000% and we continue to see growth in that area. But increasingly we think there’s going to be this blend of digital and physical, like the example of checking that something’s in stock before you head into the store. And that might’ve been an in-store journey you would have made prior to the pandemic, but now you want that digital information at your fingertips to know that it’s in stock. Or be able to check and see what’s the best place to get it, or what are the reviews about a given product? And these things you’ll look for that digital information, even when you’re going to make a purchase in the store.

Paul Lewis:
Yeah. And I think that in both your number two and number three examples, the rubber meets the road kind of at the data and the data integrations, right? So when you’re shopping from photos or you see someone down the street and you take a picture and you use Lens or other technology to try to figure out what purse they have or what outfit that is or what boots those are. Or you want to know, is this really in stock at my store? That’s all about the data and also the data not being lost in silos where it can’t be accessed from a variety of end points if you will. Is that a fair statement?

Bill Ready:
Yeah, that’s exactly right, Paul. Two things that we’ve done to really help enable that. One is building up our data set. We spoke about at Google IO, the shopping graph that we’ve created, which is built on our knowledge graph technology and a lot of really great AI and machine learning. We have 24 billion+ product listings. And we’re marrying that up with all the places that user might seek that information, whether it’s across the multiple surfaces that we have at Google, whether that’s Google search, image search YouTube, our discover feeds, our shopping experiences. But then importantly, we’re also bringing it into physical world experiences like you mentioned Lens. You can use Lens to shop a screenshot. So a lot of people as they’re perusing the web, finding inspiration, looking through different apps, finding things that they think are inspiring, they’ll take a screenshot. They can use Lens to see what that product is even though it may not have been from a product listing.

Bill Ready:
It may have just been something that they saw somebody wearing, but they think, “Oh, that’s a really great look. I’d like to have that too. What is that?” And right from the screenshot, Lens will let them shop that product. But then the same thing in the physical world that people are out in the physical world. And we talked about how people want digital information as they’re going back into the physical world. People use Lens to search what they see and now shop what they see. So when you’re out in the physical world, even if you’re not in a store, you see something that you think is really interesting, whether it’s really great patio furniture or a pair of shoes on a mannequin, but you don’t recognize what they are. You can put your phone at it. And it’s going to tell you what that product is, where you can get it. What are the reviews about it? And lots of great information that brings that same digital information that you had in the e-commerce world into your physical world shopping experiences.

Paul Lewis:
And how are you seeing brands and retailers responding to these shifts? Are there people who are getting ahead of the curve here or having early success in some of these technologies?

Bill Ready:
Yeah, absolutely, Paul. And we’re seeing these trends are really creating a lot of unique, new opportunities for merchants. So first of all, just sort of framing this, retail was up almost 6% in 2020, the most growth in well over a decade despite stores being shut or limited during lockdowns. And much of this growth came from e-commerce. So in fact, e-commerce was up 44% last year. And the biggest omni-channel retailers, no one grew overall sales without substantial growth in e-commerce. So it really was the key driver. We’ve all lived that and experienced it, but it’s very clear and the numbers across retail and how much e-commerce drove the biggest year in retail in many, many years and was the primary driver of growth.

Bill Ready:
And so as retailers are seeing that, they’re seeing very clearly that retailers need to meet their customers where they are. The right channel is the one that works for the customer. So with more users turning to digital for inspiration, consideration, and purchase shopping intent and journeys really can begin anywhere. So merchants need to consider building richer experiences across multiple channels. For example, using… I talked about we’re making it so that merchants can meet shoppers, whether it’s on search, Google Maps, YouTube, these are all places where there’s strong shopping intent and we’re working to make.

Bill Ready:
Where there’s strong shopping intent and we’re working to make it easier than ever for a merchant to do a single integration to Google, be able to publish all their inventory for free and have that inventory discoverable across any of those surfaces. So in the many different parts of a user shopping journey, it’s easy for a user to go from inspiration to the right product from the very best place for them to get that product. Few things I’ve mentioned around this in terms of some of the things retailers are doing, we’ve been beta testing, integrated shopping experiences in places like videos on demand. So an example of that is with Mondelez, is Sour Patch Kids. The company’s first creator campaign. And it drove a 3% plus click-through rate on desktop alone over a three-week period. And so now we’re piloting a shopping experience on live streams with a handful of creators and brands.

Bill Ready:
And a couple of other things I’d call out that the retailers are doing to respond to this, we’re seeing that retailers are really excited about using new technology to reach and engage shoppers online. I mentioned video, but along with video there’s rich lifestyle imagery and interactive story formats that bring unique brand messages to life online. And retailers really want to enable great loyalty and reward redemptions online. They can meet the user in the moment with the value of the loyalty rewards programs. And in certain categories like home decor, makeup and apparel, retailers are experimenting with AR for try before you buy experiences. And it’s really giving the user a great opportunity in a digital environment to see what that shade of lipstick might look like on them, or how that piece of furniture might look in their home, or what that shirt might look like on them.

Bill Ready:
And so these are places that you’re able to blend the physical and digital world in those shopping experiences. So we’re seeing retailers really engage there. And then I mentioned previously, third place, that retailers are really, really engaging here, which is where the digital and physical retail world continue to blur and Omnichannel is gaining ground. Omnichannel is one of the things, Omnichannel has been talked about for 20 plus years. With the pandemic and people having such a huge surge in e-commerce, we’re now seeing that Omnichannel is rapidly gaining ground as I mentioned before. As people are coming back into the store, they want that same digital information at their fingertips with the in-store experience as well. And so we’re really seeing a new bar for integration of online, offline channels, and retailers are really seriously thinking about a robust Omnichannel strategy to deliver cohesive and comprehensive experiences across all these channels.

Paul Lewis:
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I know that this year I bought a new couch for my living room and I went through that AR, VR phase of like, how do I want the living room to look in shape in general options? But then I still went into a store to physically touch and feel that couch to make sure it was the texture and the other things that I wanted. But it was that multiple channels, the initial AR, VR narrowing it down, what I really wanted in the space and then the final part of the journey being the store to purchase and to feel it in-person. But equally important parts of that journey.

Bill Ready:
Yeah, that’s exactly right, Paul. We’re seeing that the savviest Omnichannel retailers are really finding ways to make that a great customer experience and an advantage for them. They’re creating great digital experiences, but their tie to their in-store experience is exactly like your example of shopping for furniture.

Paul Lewis:
Well, I’m excited, ever since I heard you were coming on the show because of this next question that I want to ask you. Last year, Google made headlines when it eliminated commission fees and made it free for merchants to list their products on Google. And earlier this year, Google announced the partnership with Shopify and other e-commerce platforms to make it easier for more merchants to get discovered across Google. So can you speak a bit about the decisions that went into these roll-outs?

Bill Ready:
Sure. Yeah. As Google has always been about the democratization of access to information. And we’re extending that ethos to the world of commerce, building an open and free commerce ecosystem. Our goal is to build a commerce experience that strengthens the relationship between sellers and their customers without an intermediary necessarily having to stand in the middle. And so we started by reducing the financial barriers for retailers to make all their inventory easily discoverable by consumers. We want to make sure that as people move to the digital world, they have just as much, if not more choice, in the digital world than they did in a physical world. It’s a pretty uninteresting world if you wake up in a few years and there’s only one place to buy things. And we’ve all had the experience through the pandemic, that there’s no one retailer that can serve every need of every consumer.

Bill Ready:
And so we started with removing the financial barrier for all the world’s retailers to be discoverable online. And so in doing that, we said, “We’ll make it free and very simple to list all your inventory, have all of your inventory discoverable. You don’t have to pay to make it discoverable. And we’re going to work with great commerce platforms.” So there’s a very simple integration that allows a retailer to push a few buttons to have their full inventory discoverable, whether it’s Google Search, image search, shopping, YouTube, discovery feeds, across all different surfaces, these [inaudible 00:15:29] can become discoverable.

Bill Ready:
And so we’ve seen that with partners like Shopify, Square, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, GoDaddy we’re seeing really great response from the merchants that run on those platforms. In just a few clicks, they can become discoverable across our experiences. And we saw that that was not only a great thing for those merchants, we grew our merchant base by more than 80% last year. It was a great thing for consumers because consumers are able to find much more of the things they were looking for from a much broader set of sellers. In fact, we shared shortly after we made those changes.

Bill Ready:
And then when we made those changes and made that broader set of inventory discoverable, we saw a 50% plus lift in clicks from consumers on our sopping surface. And that 50% plus lift in clicks, that’s a whole lot of people that are finding much more of what they’re looking for. And importantly, they’re finding it from a broader set of sellers. While we saw every size retailer benefited from that change, we saw the small and midsize retailers benefited disproportionately. So it really was, in this notion of democratizing access, helping those that were struggling the most to meet the consumer in the digital environment. And you would have seen that through the pandemic this past year. The small storefronts, that you needed to get online for the very first time, where the local businesses in your community, they were trying to meet consumers, even other storefronts were closed.

Bill Ready:
And so we really saw tremendous benefit across a very broad set of merchants with that, and consumers really, really engaging with it. I mentioned earlier our shopping graph. Those 24 billion plus listings that we have for millions of merchants is really giving us a fantastic ability to get the right product in front of the right user at the right moment in time, and help that user understand all the attributes about what’s the best product for them and what’s the best place to buy that product. What are all their options for where to buy that product, whether it’s from a really large e-commerce company, a marketplace, an Omnichannel retailer, or the small little mom and pop shop down the street in their neighborhood.

Paul Lewis:
Right. And I think that that goes back to what we talked about before too. It’s that visibility into the deeper data. The first layer of data is, do they carry that product? Have they listed that product? And then…

Paul Lewis:
Do they carry that product and have they listed that product and then do they have that product in stock? I think that we’re all seeing the challenges with the backup in the ports with ships sitting out for miles and miles out into the ocean waiting to get in, as well as manufacturing disruptions and other things that supply chain and in stock availability of items is becoming more of a challenge than it’s been possibly in the past. And so, having that ability to not only tell you where you can buy the product, but who has it in stock or who can ship it to you in a reasonable timeframe, is going to be another discerning for a consumer’s choice.

Bill Ready:
No, that’s exactly right, Paul. And I think this is a big driver behind us bringing more inventory information onto our platform, so that users can see where things are in stock, in whatever options for buying, whether it’s delivery speeds, buy online, pickup in store, curbside. We’ve done a lot around that. And the metadata in the shopping graph, pricing reviews, being able to sort of watch videos about a product or all these kinds of things, really help shoppers find the right products from the widest range of merchants. And then interestingly, to your point around, we all have experience through the pandemic of things being out of stock and hard to find and I think there’s, as you mentioned with supply chain issues, that may continue for some time.

Bill Ready:
We’ve also seen that having that really rich information helps users not only find where things are in stock and look for places they could buy those things, it’s also helping them find easy alternatives. If you just can’t get the exact thing, well, what are other interesting things that might be related to that? And so, a retailer having their full set of inventory available is more important than ever, both to meet the user where they are with the thing they have in stock. But also, you have things not in stock, what are similar things that the retailer might have to offer that user, that the user might not have otherwise known about?

Paul Lewis:
Yeah, all excellent points. And I can’t help but recognize that since you’ve made these shifts and announcements, there’s been a lot of press about Google wanting to woo sellers away from Amazon. So, let’s talk about it, Bill, what is it that Google offers that Amazon doesn’t or would you frame that, obviously that’s where it’s been framed in the press, how would you frame the question and what’s the right answer?

Bill Ready:
Well, we work with retailers of every type of size, including the very largest, all the way to the very smallest. And so, our role in this is very different in that we are not a retailer, we have no aspirations of being a retailer, we are here to help every retailer be more digitally enabled and more easily meet the consumer in the digital environment. And so, that’s really where you’ve seen us focus, on how we can help users meet the merchant in the digital environment and remove barriers between in the user and the retailer or the merchant connecting directly.

Bill Ready:
So, we’re bringing more choice, more information, more transparency to these shopping sessions, by supporting an open ecosystem where shoppers can connect directly with merchants without disintermediation, know who they’re buying from, have full access to information about who they’re buying from, what are the attributes of the product, the seller they’re buying from and sellers get to connect with customers directly. Instead of accessing just a transaction, sellers get to gain a customer, not just a transaction and customers get to on understand who they’re buying from.

Bill Ready:
And so, I think that the key things that we’re focused on that we think Google does really well and it’s really additive to the broader retail ecosystem, again, from the very largest e-commerce players and omnichannel retailers all the way down to small sellers and small businesses, the things that we think we’re uniquely equipped to bring to the equation are, number one, discoverability. We can do that across multiple surfaces, whether it’s search, maps, YouTube, different modes that the user’s in, we can help drive discoverability across a number of different formats. Second, comprehensiveness, we’re really good when it comes to organizing information, not just for online merchants, but those with physical stores as well. Information, as we were talking about earlier, of what’s in stock, all the way to ratings and reviews and prices for online purchases. And then, the third is technology, from dynamic AI capabilities to consumer technologies, such as Google Lens, we can bridge the online and offline and bring commerce to new surfaces.

Paul Lewis:
Yeah, I think that is a very wide range of capabilities. And I think at the conferences that have been starting up recently that I’ve been attending, a lot of the watch words out there is to be careful of disintermediation. As you get farther and farther away from knowing your customer and the data and those elements, it gets harder to control your brand and your experience and ultimately your success, so I think the fact that Google is empowering retailers to have all of that directly is an important attribute for retailers to consider.

Bill Ready:
Yeah, that’s exactly right, Paul, and we’re really seeing consumers respond to it. Retail’s been a very big category for Google for 20 plus years, but we’re doing more for this category than ever before. And I think I mentioned earlier, and we now have more than a billion shopping sessions happen across Google every single day, so consumers are really engaging with the ability to go have easy access to this broad set of sellers and to really engage directly with retailers and sellers of all sizes and to be able to learn more about the product they’re buying, who they’re buying it from, what are the value propositions of the different retailers, whether it’s omnichannel experiences or sustainability, or whatever the retailer’s choosing to differentiate on, we’re helping the retailer put those value props forward and meet the user where they are in great moments of digital engagement. And again, we’re seeing really great response from consumers on that and it’s a big driver of why we see a billion plus shopping session across Google every single day.

Paul Lewis:
And what, if anything, can you tell me about some of the enhancements that you see coming for the future in the shopping search and the consumer shopping journey?

Bill Ready:
Yeah, so I think as we’ve spoken about a little bit, I think we’ll see a lot more engagement in visual browsing experiences, this is some of what we’ve put out there for the holidays, around a much more visual and browsey experience on our main search results page. I think more rich content, rich media and a variety of sources of influence, whether that’s sort of rich brand content or videos or influencers on YouTube, these kinds of things are all having more and more impact on the consumer shopping journey.

Bill Ready:
We’re bringing those together in a more holistic experience, so that users have access to great information from the retailer, but also reviews and video content and brand content and all these things in one place. And we think those create, we talked earlier about, as users engage more digitally, they miss the visual elements of shopping. They miss window shopping and walking the mall and being able to sort of look for things they didn’t know they were looking for and being inspired. And so, seeing more of that come into the digital environment, certainly there are the beginnings of that, but we think there’s a lot more of that and we’re seeing retailers find really creative ways to engage in that.

Paul Lewis:
Well, and you brought up holiday shopping and that you’re finding new visual ways to allow people to explore, which I think is so important, right? That is one of the biggest missing elements of going and walking the mall, is visually being inspired. Human beings are innately visually oriented creatures, and so that visual inspiration, I think, is a huge part, but you did mention all kinds of other elements of things about influencers and trends and other information that people want to bring into their decisions. And then, of course, I think this holiday is shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable holidays I would say in recent times, both from are people going to go back to stores? How much of the trends that happened from the pandemic of staying indoors, will those trends persist and people will shop primarily online? And then again, we talked a little bit before about supply shortages, will things even be in stock that you want to get? What are your thoughts as we just turn to holiday? What are some of the big elements that you would mention or hit on?

Bill Ready:
Yeah, so digital commerce will definitely continue to be an area of focus given the heterogeneity in how the pandemic is impacting various areas and in different ways. You mentioned several of those. So we’re bringing more choice, more information, more transparency to shopping experiences to help the user with what in some ways is a more complex journey for them because of that heterogeneity, whether it’s supply chain disruptions or understanding what’s in stock, what’s not? Or wanting to engage with more sellers in their own community and support their own community as their community is reopening. So we think all these things will continue through the holiday season.

Bill Ready:
And a few key trends that we see for the holiday season, one, shopping journeys will increasingly begin online, even when the journey ends in the physical store. So when it comes to shopping, people want the best products, the best price from the broadest range of merchants, and our [inaudible 00:29:04] ecosystem strategy and our new shopping experience on Search really allows us to connect shoppers to more products from a variety of retailers, whether those are big box retailers, fully online e-commerce players, marketplaces and direct to consumer brands and local boutiques. So we think that gives the user a really great range of choices to engage in that digital environment.

Bill Ready:
We also see people looking for more detailed and timely information online, including ratings, deals, discounts from loyalty programs, and as you mentioned, availability. And it’s not just about availability of whether it’s in stock. It’s, well, what’s the shipping speed going to be? Or can I get it even faster than having it shipped because it’s sitting on a shelf at a store just down the street from me? And if it is on that shelf at the store down the street from me, do they have curbside pickup? What’s their buy online, pickup in store look like? So all of those things we think are really important areas of information that consumers will want in these digital shopping journeys.

Bill Ready:
And for merchants, I would say there are a few things that merchants should be thinking about. First of all, they mentioned a few times, there’s no barrier to a merchant really having their full inventory available and discoverable for users on Google Surfaces. It’s free, we’ve created integrations that make it really easy to do that with a number of the commerce platforms, so for retailers, making sure their full inventory is available. I think in the past, when these things were primarily advertising experiences, retailers might have had to think about, well, I’ll have my higher margin products online, or I’ll have my larger ticket items available for discovery, or even because of shipping, they might’ve thought about, well, I need a certain order size for it to really make sense for an online purchase because of the cost of shipping. Well, now that we’re seeing digital come into the physical world, I think it’s knocking down all these barriers.

Bill Ready:
We’ve knocked down the barrier of making it free and easy to list your full set of inventory, but the ability to say to a user, which things are available for shipping, which things are available in store, we see retailers really taking advantage of that as they make their full inventory available. That full inventory rating being available also pairs with what are the user’s options for how to buy that inventory? And even things that might’ve been too small a purchase price for the retailer to ship it, they can now tell the user, well, it’s sitting on our shelf in the store down the street. And that user not only comes in to get that thing they’re looking for, they probably end up buying some things to go with it and building a basket around that. And so for the merchant, making sure their full inventory is discoverable, we’ve made it easier than ever to do so it’s free to do so and we’re seeing really drive a lot of engagement with consumers.

Bill Ready:
The second thing I’d mentioned is that the search for deals will begin early. Users have always gone through this in the holidays of certain items were going to sell out, but especially after the year we had it in 2020 and the fact that there are continuing supply chain disruptions, people are going to be looking earlier and earlier for their holiday shopping journeys. And not only will that holiday shopping start earlier, the search for deals is going to begin early. It’s not the case that people are going to wait for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s only mid-October and we’ve already seen holiday sales starting to pick up. And we see that people are increasingly looking for ways to save money. In fact, we’ve seen the searches for discount code have increased 50% since last year. 44% of US consumers who are planning to shop for the holidays say they’ll start their shopping earlier than they did last year, and they had started earlier last year than they had in prior years.

Bill Ready:
So we’re rolling out a few new ways to find deals from Google. For example, starting this month, when people search for deals during major sales moments like Black Friday deals or Cyber Monday deals, they’ll see a new section highlighting relevant deals alongside other related sales information. And we also have product-specific deal section on Google Shopping. For instance, if you’re searching for air fryer, you may see a new section that will organize and show you air fryers that are competitively priced or discounted from retailers across the web, all in one place. And all these features provide retailers a free way to get discovered by shoppers who are looking to save this holiday season.

Bill Ready:
And then one final one, we’ve touched on it a bit, is that people will continue to shop from new formats. We’ve seen a 60% increase in Google image searches for ideas. According to our research, a remarkable 70% of customers buy a brand after seeing it on YouTube. So we’re bringing new commerce experiences to image formats through Lens, which I mentioned earlier, and we have more that we’ll share on YouTube as well. So tip for merchants around that, using rich imagery and video is a great way to engage with customers, tell your brand story and help customers get more of that feel for who they’re buying from in the digital environment.

Paul Lewis:
Wow. So many great insights and vision on where this is headed. Bill, I think we could have this show go double its length and we still wouldn’t run out of things to talk about, but to wrap things up, I want to go ahead and pre-invite you to be on the October 2025 show where we can talk. I want to see if drone wait time will be one of the attributes of a product listing, drone delivery wait time. But it’s been great having you on the show. Thanks for sharing that with everyone.

Bill Ready:
Thanks for having me, Paul. It’s great to talk to you and yeah, we’ll have a lot more that we do in this space. We’re committed to retail and definitely look forward to sharing that with you as we continue through the journey.