Wilko.com Accelerates Digital Transformation With Google Cloud

wilko.com has announced a strategic collaboration with Google Cloud to support the next phase of wilko.com and its AI transformation, strengthening the online experience for customers and building the foundations for future innovation. 

Utilising Google Cloud’s AI technologies, the rollout introduces AI-driven capabilities across wilko.com, spanning search, product discovery and digital content, marking a significant step beyond standalone feature innovation.

Rooted in wilko.com’s heritage as the home of family value for everyday home and garden essentials, the collaboration is focused on enhancing how customers discover, shop and interact online, making it easier to complete everyday jobs with confidence. 

By combining large language models (LLMs) with internally developed models and proprietary data, continuously refined through real-time behavioural data and product catalogue inputs, the platform enables more natural, conversational queries and a more intuitive customer journey to purchase.

Crucially, the business is not relying on off-the-shelf tools alone. CDS has developed a hybrid AI approach, combining its own trained models with Google Cloud’s technologies, ensuring outputs are grounded in proprietary data, customer insight and commercial priorities and continuously improving through live performance feedback.

Ben Exall, Group Chief Digital & Marketing Officer at CDS Superstores, said: “This isn’t about experimenting with AI, it’s about operationalising it. This collaboration with Google Cloud is about building the right foundations for the future of wilko.com.

“Our focus is on building a retail platform that becomes smarter over time. By combining our own data and models with Google Cloud’s AI technologies, we’re able to move faster than traditional approaches and scale innovation in weeks, not months.

“We’re focused on making everyday shopping simpler and more accessible for our customers, while staying true to what wilko has always stood for, great value, reliability and helping people get jobs done around the home.

The programme builds on proven results across other CDS platforms, where AI-led search and discovery capabilities have already delivered measurable uplifts in both conversion and revenue, underlining the commercial impact of AI when deployed at scale.

Andrea Williamson, Retail Director, Google Cloud UK said: ¨By anchoring wilko.com’s digital transformation in Google Cloud AI, CDS Superstores is moving beyond standalone features to create a more adaptive and resilient business. We are proud to provide the technological backbone for an infrastructure project of this scale, helping wilko stay ahead of evolving customer expectations.” 

With AI now embedded across both customer experience and internal operations, the group is laying the groundwork for the next phase of digital retail, including more advanced personalisation, conversational interfaces and emerging applications in agentic commerce. 

Google Cloud technologies are being rolled out across wilko as part of a multi-million-pound infrastructure project funded by CDS Superstores to modernise its retail brands, including The Range, Homebase, and Bathstore. 

At a time when many retailers are still piloting AI, CDS Superstores is already deploying it at scale, positioning wilko.com as a faster-moving, more adaptive digital retail brand built for the future.

Source : CDS Superstores/wilko

Image : CDS Superstores/wilko

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