BuyRailings: AI Shopping Assistant Increases E-Commerce Sales by 12%
1. The Challenge: Helping Customers Navigate 9,000+ SKUs
Buying a railing system isn't like buying a t-shirt.
Customers need to understand:
- Which railing style fits their home
- Which posts, balusters, rails, and hardware work together
- Installation requirements
- Building code and compliance considerations
- Available options and accessories
And they need to make those decisions across a catalog containing more than 9,000 products.
For BuyRailings.com, a leading e-commerce retailer of railing systems and accessories, helping customers navigate that complexity had become increasingly difficult.
Search worked. Navigation worked. But neither behaved like a product expert.
As BuyRailings CEO, Ihab Barrawi, explained:
"Finding the right product requires time and expertise."
Customers often knew their situation:
"I need a railing for an outdoor deck with these dimensions."
But they didn't know:
- Which products fit together
- What accessories they needed
- Which materials were best
- What code requirements applied
The result?
Long phone calls. Complex support conversations. And customers who needed help from highly trained product experts.
A Human Expert Doesn't Scale
BuyRailings had experimented with a traditional support chatbot. It offered workflows. Rules. Preset responses.
But it couldn't actually help customers.
"It didn't help users find the right product or discuss options."
The company needed something fundamentally different:
An AI shopping assistant deployed right on their e-commerce website that was capable of:
- Understanding thousands of products
- Reasoning about compatibility
- Recommending complete solutions
- Answering technical questions
- Maintaining complete accuracy
And perhaps most importantly: Not making things up.
Accuracy Was Non-Negotiable
The team had significant concerns about deploying AI:
- Hallucinations
- Incorrect prices
- Wrong policies
- Bad recommendations
- Every mistake represented lost trust
And lost sales.
"The biggest fear is losing business because of the AI agent."
BuyRailings needed an AI system that was:
- Data bounded
- Auditable
- Accurate
- Honest
- Secure
- Easy to manage
2. The Solution: An AI Shopping Assistant Powered by CrafterQ
BuyRailings created their CrafterQ AI agent in just a few minutes, tested and configured its behavior in the CrafterQ Console, and then optimized and deployed it on their website in less than an hour.
The AI agent was trained on:
- The entire buyrailings.com website
- Product catalog data
- Compliance documentation
- Product installation guides
- Escalation rules
Unlike traditional chatbots built around workflows and decision trees, CrafterQ was able to reason across all of these information sources simultaneously.
The result: customers could describe their project in plain English.
And with CrafterQ, the e-commerce AI shopping assistant can now:
- Recommend compatible products
- Explain why they were recommended
- Answer follow-up questions
- Guide the customer toward a complete solution
From Search to Conversation
The change in customer behavior was immediate.
Previously:
- Search for railing
- Search for posts
- Search for connectors
- Search for installation guide
- Search for accessories
- Repeat
Now?
Customers simply ask:
"I need a railing system for my outdoor deck. What do I need?"
CrafterQ assembles:
- Compatible railing systems
- Matching posts
- Required accessories
- Installation information
- Links to products
And continues the conversation. The customer never has to restart the search.
3. Business Results: Higher Sales, Lower Bounce Rates, Faster Product Discovery
The impact was almost instantaneous.
📈 12% Increase in Sales
Within two weeks of deploying CrafterQ: 12% increase in e-commerce sales (compared to the previous 2 weeks before CrafterQ was deployed)
42% Increase in Time on Site
Customers stay engaged longer because conversations naturally expand into:
- Product comparisons
- Installation questions
- Alternative recommendations
- Complete solution design
25% Lower Bounce Rate
Instead of leaving after failing to find a product, visitors ask. And the AI answers. Website bounce rates dropped immediately.
Massive Sales Support Savings
Perhaps the most surprising result: Q now handles many of the complex pre-sales conversations that previously required a human expert.
What once required:
- Long phone calls
- Expensive sales experts
- Commission payouts
- Multiple follow-up conversations
Now happens:
- Instantly
- Automatically
- At virtually zero cost
"Q does this now for almost nothing."
What CrafterQ Revealed
The conversations uncovered problems the team didn't realize existed.
Chat logs revealed:
- Missing pages
- Broken links
- Conflicting information
- SEO pages that distracted customers
The company discovered that years of optimizing for Google had created friction for real people.
"Our website was tailored for Google SEO."
But customers wanted something else.
"It's clear that customers would rather 'talk' to the site than browse and search."
A New Model for E-Commerce
BuyRailings no longer thinks of their website as:
- Pages
- Menus
- Categories
- Search results
Instead: It's a product expert available 24/7. An AI shopping assistant. A conversational commerce experience.
And a competitive advantage.
CrafterQ Customer Testimonial
"CrafterQ transformed our e-commerce website from a catalog customers had to navigate into an AI shopping assistant that helps them find exactly what they need quickly and efficiently."
-- Ihab Barrawi, CEO of BuyRailings.com
The Bigger Lesson
E-commerce has spent decades optimizing:
- Navigation
- Menus
- Search
- Filters
But customers don't wake up wanting to browse categories. They want solutions.
BuyRailings proved that when an AI agent on a website understands products deeply enough to recommend complete solutions, customers stop searching. And start buying.
Try It For Yourself
Start generating more e-commerce sales today by signing up for your free CrafterQ account here.
