Very is expanding the use of AI across its ecommerce operation after an early personalisation trial drove a 20 per cent increase in revenue per customer.
It has partnered with technology firm Made With Intent to tailor what shoppers see in real time, using more than 800 behavioural signals to assess how likely someone is to browse, buy or abandon a visit.
The technology will determine when Very serves individual customers with elements such as targeted discounts, payment options and prompts during their shopping journey, rather than presenting the same experience to every visitor.
Very said one of the strategies deployed during the first month of the partnership increased revenue per customer by a fifth, while overall conversion also improved.
It did not disclose the size of the conversion uplift.
The system combines Made With Intent’s proprietary predictive model with an optimisation tool that decides which experience to show across hundreds of possible combinations of customer behaviour. It then uses the outcome of previous sessions to inform future decisions.
The Very Group digital director Sarah Hanna said the technology gave its ecommerce team greater control over what customers see at different points in their journey.
She said: “Made With Intent gives our ecommerce team a brand-new lever that they can effortlessly activate to make a difference on what our customers see and when – whether that’s one-off discounts or personalised payment options.”
Hanna added that the early results had been “promising”, pointing to both the increase in revenue per customer and higher conversion.
Made With Intent founder David Mannheim said the aim was to replace static online experiences with ones that respond to a customer’s intentions as they shop.
For Very, the project forms part of a broader push to use data and technology to improve the economics of its ecommerce business.
The Very Group, which also owns Littlewoods, generates annual revenue of around £2.1bn and has 4.2m active customers. Very UK accounts for 88 per cent of group revenue and generated £1.83bn in its 2024/25 financial year.
Global investment firm Carlyle took ownership of the group in November last year, with International Media Investments remaining a key stakeholder.
At the time, the companies specifically identified greater use of technology and data as one of the areas intended to support Very’s future growth.
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