Textual: Text Robots that Create Effective Content for Online Retailers

Henrik Gemoll, CEO

“We deliver the most advanced text robots within the area of automated text generation. There will be huge developments in this area, as we are only scratching the surface of what machines can do,” says Henrik Gemoll, CEO of Textual. The field of developing text and content has been overshadowed by the human minds, where journalists and copywriters produce the most appealing texts for masses. However, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is miraculously changing the scenario—giving rise to the artificial brain of sophisticated robots that can create quality contents and texts.

Based in Stockholm, Textual made the debut of its solution in 2015 within the journalism sector, but after continuous product development and witnessing the rise of online retail industry—focusing on mid to large size retailers. “We help online retailers to automate the content process in order to increase their online visibility,” adds Gemoll. The company’s text robot automatically generates marketing material, such as product descriptions, digital ads, and materials for personalized communication.

Online retailing is one sector where retailers need to craft unique product description for each item and develop innovative offers for marketing, such as listing on Amazon to stay on top of the search list. On top of that, they also have to make these contents available in multiple languages. Another area is, today search engines constant put contents to the test, and if a retailer’s product description on one site is a duplicate of the other, they remove the product from the search result.

We help online retailers to automate the content process in order to increase their online visibility

Search engines consider this content appropriate and want to make sure you do not steal content from someone else. This makes the arena extremely competitive for the retailer to have unique contents. In such a situation, to make the retailers more content efficient, Textual’s text robots can create new contents and versions for each product. On one end, the company’s value proposition is to deliver cost efficiency as compared to human labor—Textual’s robots can generate content in 15 languages simultaneously, and on the other end, the company provides search engine optimized contents. Textual’s algorithms learn to make variations of the text to improve the search ranking. Over time, the algorithms learn the best way to describe a product to get the best possible search ranking, which in turn improves the retailers’ lead acquisition in the search engine and gain new customers.

Textual’s technology is provided as a SaaS service connected to each client via API. Each time Textual associates with a client, it first connects to the product database to get the product data from the client. Based on that the company creates a vocabulary, specific for each client by setting a particular tone of voice and words that are used for a specific product segment; for instance, laptops and fashion. This process is performed iteratively with improvement over time. In case a client needs a new text for a product, they make an API call request to Textual for the specific product in a particular language. The newly generated text is then sent back via API to their content system, which could be an e-commerce platform. To ensure that the text generation is perfect, the company has a foundation of grammar and linguistic resources. “We are one of the few players in the market that covers most of the European languages,” claims Gemoll.

Utilizing the natural language around products, Textual write about a product’s actual features and not about the data picked from manufacturers. For this reason, the company is continuously enriching its database on product descriptions. Presently, Textual is focused on few product sections like clothes, furniture, and electronics, while also trying to extend its footprints in the automotive sector. “Irrespective of the vertical, we continuously strive to deliver a personalized experience to online retailers throughout their customer journey, and our technology makes that is a reality,” concludes Gemoll.