+10.8%
Click-Through Rate
+17.1%
Add-to-Cart Rate
How The North Face Renewed Cut Query Abandonment and Lifted ATC Rate with Marqo
Company Overview
The North Face Renewed is The North Face's branded resale marketplace, operated by Archive. The platform gives shoppers access to authenticated pre-owned North Face gear at a fraction of retail price, serving outdoor enthusiasts looking for iconic products like Nuptse jackets and Denali fleeces. It also supports The North Face's sustainability commitments by extending product life cycles.
Challenges
Before Marqo, The North Face Renewed USA was losing 95% of search traffic before shoppers reached Add to Cart. With a 30% query abandonment rate, the search experience was failing shoppers at the first moment of intent.
The core problem was keyword rigidity. Misspellings returned zero results. Shoppers searching for products like "nupste" or "artic parka" found nothing, despite thousands of matching items in inventory. Synonyms were equally broken, with common word alternatives returning only a fraction of relevant results. As a result, a significant share of users were forced to rephrase their queries entirely just to find products that already existed on the site.
The highest-intent shoppers, those searching for specific models and styles by name, were also the most likely to be let down. Resale added further complexity: The North Face Renewed carries one-of-a-kind items that do not restock, inventory turns over constantly, and out-of-stock products still needed SEO coverage without degrading the live shopping experience.
Solution
Marqo deployed its pixel on The North Face Renewed to begin capturing shopper interaction signals including clicks, add-to-carts, purchases, and browsing patterns. These signals trained a custom relevance model built specifically for The North Face Renewed's catalog, understanding the vocabulary of outdoor gear shoppers: model names, product codes, fabric technologies, and the specific way North Face fans search for iconic styles.
Marqo handled typos and synonyms natively. "Nupste" correctly surfaced Nuptse results, "coat" mapped to jacket inventory, and common misspellings stopped producing zero-result pages. Out-of-stock items were kept indexable for SEO while being intelligently deprioritized in live results.
Typo tolerance eliminated zero-result pages: Marqo recognized common misspellings like "nupste", "artic parka", and "ositi" and returned relevant results instead of nothing.
Synonym understanding reduced rewording: Shoppers no longer needed to guess the right keyword. "Coat" correctly surfaced jacket inventory, and synonym pairs were resolved automatically.
Resale-aware out-of-stock handling: Marqo kept out-of-stock products indexable for SEO while dynamically deprioritizing them in live results based on availability.
Continuous learning from North Face shoppers: As click, ATC, and purchase data accumulated, Marqo's model improved ranking quality over time, with reword rates declining steadily across January and February 2026.
Results
Marqo was deployed for 100% of traffic on The North Face Renewed USA. Results were measured through rigorous A/A testing against the prior search setup.
+10.8%
Click-Through Rate
+17.1%
Add-to-Cart Rate
+30.9%
Avg Cart Value
+14.4%
Queries per User
What This Means
The North Face Renewed's shoppers know exactly what they want: a specific jacket, a specific model, a specific colorway. The old keyword search punished them for how they naturally searched. Marqo fixed that by meeting shoppers where they are, understanding the outdoor gear vocabulary, handling the typos, and surfacing the right product whether a shopper typed "nuptse" or "nupste". The result is a search experience that converts the highest-intent shoppers instead of losing them to zero results.
Shoppers who knew exactly what they wanted stopped being blocked by typos and synonym gaps, with CTR lifting from 45.4% to 50.3%
Higher-quality results drove bigger baskets, with avg ATC value per user rising 30.9%
Reword rates declined consistently as Marqo's model learned from North Face shopper behavior over time
Results reflect production traffic after full deployment on The North Face Renewed USA. Outcomes may vary depending on catalog size, traffic volume, and implementation configuration.
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