Helsinki-based commerce experience platform Nosto raises $16 million

Commerce experience platform Nosto has raised $16 million in a new funding round provided by Mandatum Asset Management Growth Equity that will see the company scale its personalised site search solution.

In a nutshell, Nosto offers retailers the possibility to provide a personalised shopping experience from soup to salad. Using an AI-driven mechanism, retailers have the ability to launch 1 to 1 omnichannel marketing campaigns, all without the need for dedicated and costly IT resources. 

According to Nosto’s product discovery research conducted in January of this year, 69 percent of all shoppers go directly to the search bar on a brand’s website, indicating that product discovery starts and ends with search. 

If the search experience is lacking, chances are, the entire experience a customer has with that brand is lacking. According to Nosto’s research, 80 percent of all shoppers leave e-commerce websites due to lackluster site searches and irrelevant results.

The same research unearthed that 95 percent of all brands indicated that their search technology remained an achilles heel, with 85 percent saying that they plan to continually invest in the area highlighting the importance of this part of the e-commerce technology stack.

Nosto reports that over 2,500 retailers including Paul Smith, Kylie Cosmetics, Muji, Dermalogica, Centric Brands, and Princess Polly, in over 100 countries around the world using Nosto report increased conversion and revenue. 

“Merchants using Nosto are growing quickly, and merchants using Nosto on the Shopify platform are growing quicker still,” commented Nosto CEO Jim Lofgren. “This investment will help us continue scaling our commerce experience platform, supporting brands in their own growth ambitions.”

In mid-2021, Nosto announced that it had acquired US-based content marketing firm Stackla, and in conjunction with the new funding announcement, Nosto co-founder and Chief Corporate Development Officer Juha Valvanne indicated that we might see more of the same in the company’s near future.

“This raise allows us to accelerate our innovation and continue developing our commerce experience platform. It also empowers us to continue making more acquisitions. Nosto is a profitable company, and we have made three acquisitions in 18 months. We continue to look for attractive acquisition targets to expand both market share and product offering.”