The biggest online retailer in the world, Amazon, is an exemplar of an ecommerce store. Such is its popularity that it has 150.6 million mobile users in the U.S alone. And one of the biggest reasons for this is that they leverage AI solutions for ecommerce.
Image via Oberlo
Due to it, Amazon has slowly become synonymous with shopping online and is the leading business in the ecommerce industry. So much so that 89% of respondents from a survey claim that they are more likely to shop online from Amazon than any other ecommerce store.
Courtesy of artificial intelligence, Amazon continues to grow its business by gaining new acquisitions, developing new products, and creating various service offerings.
So, let’s take a look at how AI-powered solutions are transforming the ecommerce industry.
Customers demand better service and shopping experiences, which is why businesses are investing in them. But, as a result, it has become difficult to stand out.
In such a diverse competitive landscape, businesses that want to attract and acquire potential customers have to be smarter and faster to succeed. That’s where AI enters the picture.
The use of artificial intelligence has hugely transformed ecommerce by allowing retailers to predict the shopping patterns of a consumer based on their purchase behavior. In addition to that, businesses are also using AI for personalization. It helps them offer product recommendations, analyze customer behavior, provide instantaneous customer service through chatbots, and more.
So, how are AI solutions for ecommerce revolutionizing the shopping experience today?
In this article, we will take a look at some crucial AI solutions for ecommerce along with real-life examples of how companies are using them.
There are many AI solutions disrupting the ecommerce landscape. However, we’ll discuss the four major use cases of AI that are dominating the ecommerce industry today.
Let’s get started.
Out of all major use cases of artificial intelligence in ecommerce, personalized recommendations are perhaps the most telling. Their reverberating effect on ROI has been known to boost average order values (AOV) by 369% and conversion rates by 288%.
While in the past, brick-and-mortar sales executives relied on their experiential knowledge in gauging customer expectations, AI utilizes its data-processing capabilities to do the same.
In today’s digital world, AI solutions for ecommerce use machine learning algorithms to analyze large amounts of customer data to deliver intelligent product recommendations. This results in increased conversion rates and greater ROI.
As far as intelligent product recommendations are concerned, the deep neural networks of AI solutions process product images and customer responses to get two major types of filtering. These include:
Such filtering options help businesses suggest similar items to customers who have viewed or bought similar kinds of products.
For example, you might have seen how the ecommerce giant, Amazon, proactively employs item-to-item collaborative filtering powered by machine learning algorithms.
Image via Amazon
Ecommerce companies use such filtering to offer a combination of products that match the purchase history of a user.
For example, Amazon proactively employs content-based filtering to deliver highly personalized product recommendations for both individuals and segmented buyers.
Image via Amazon
Numerous ecommerce retail businesses today are turning to chatbots to offer round-the-clock support to their customers.
Powered with AI, chatbots are an intuitive support medium through which you can serve your customers instantly without the need to hire more customer representatives.
Chatbots owe their popularity to their round-the-clock availability and the instantaneous service they provide. These bots can also service multiple customers simultaneously, making the once elusive dream of offering customer service at scale a tangible reality.
Along with that obvious use case, these virtual assistants can be coupled with a live chat option to route complex customer requests to human agents.
You can also deploy AI chatbots on your ecommerce website, social media accounts, and other consumer touchpoints to assist your existing and potential customers in real time. As a result, you’d be able to solve their requests quickly without having your agents respond to repetitive requests.
What's more?
Chatbot solutions can also come in handy for ecommerce marketing and lead generation. Whenever any visitor wants to communicate with the bot, the chatbot can ask them for basic details such as their name and email address. This will help you turn those visitors into leads.
You can also integrate AI chatbot solutions with your ecommerce shopping cart to automate online ordering and booking processes for customers. This, in turn, can help you boost your ecommerce sales.
The best part about these chatbot solutions is that they leverage the power of natural language processing, predictive analytics, and machine learning to understand customer requests and respond accordingly.
For example, Argomall’s virtual assistant is the perfect example of how an ecommerce business uses AI bots efficiently. Their bot helps them streamline the company’s sales processes and lets users seek out critical information about their purchases.
If the chatbot is not able to answer customer requests, they route those requests to the human agent. Today, the chatbot has become a mainstay of Argomall’s sales processes. It helped them get a 23X increase in ROI, ultimately engineering a 40% YoY business growth.
Image via Chatfuel
Online retailers are likely to be aware of the complexity involved with ecommerce inventory management. Often knackering at times, inventory management can now be steadily streamlined, thanks to AI solutions for ecommerce that can:
In addition to inventory management, AI technology and software solutions for ecommerce are also enabling warehouse management through the use of automated robots. Unlike humans, these can be used to retrieve and store existing product stock round the clock along with immediately dispatching products after an online purchase.
Moreover, warehouses are also dabbling in emerging technologies such as AR/VR and IoT, which, when combined with AI solutions, can enhance their operational efficiency. However, for this, you need to locate and determine the risk score of tasks in the warehouse based on inventory data.
Many times, consumers come across a product online that they want to buy but don't know what it is called. Most of the consumers have experienced the fear of missing out on the product that they want to buy but don't know how to find it.
Fortunately, AI is turning that for the better by allowing users to categorize, interpret, and understand images. This will make it easier for shoppers to reverse search the products they like through their images.
With the help of deep learning, AI solutions for ecommerce tag, arrange, and search content automatically. They also label features of multimedia files.
Take the image below, for example.
Also known as visual search, it is a real-life manifestation of image classification in the Amazon app. Using this AI solution, a user can easily scan the object they want to buy. And, Amazon's AI engine will redirect the user to the product page of the scanned object.
Image via Amazon
Q1. How can AI be used in ecommerce?
A. It’s very much possible to use AI solutions for ecommerce. You can use it to provide relevant product recommendations, improve customer experiences, streamline inventory management, and allow users to search for products through images.
Q2. How does artificial intelligence (AI) bring about a great change in ecommerce?
A. With the help of AI solutions for ecommerce, businesses can create personalized online experiences for their shoppers. AI solutions can help you recommend products exclusively suited to the needs of each of your shoppers and, thereby, increase sales.
Q3. How is AI used in shopping?
A. With the advent of voice search through natural language processing, people use voice assistants like Alexa and Siri to shop for their favorite products online. You can also enable your customers to find and buy products through visual searches.
Overall, AI solutions for ecommerce have made shopping easier for users.
Q4. Can intelligent systems be integrated into your ecommerce website for shopping?
A. Yes, you can integrate an AI chatbot solution into the shopping cart of your ecommerce website. This would allow your potential customers to purchase products while communicating with the chatbot.
Q5. How can I create a customer-centric search using AI technology in ecommerce?
A. Using AI solutions for ecommerce, you can seamlessly tag, label, and organize your products. Additionally, you can also add visual and voice search capabilities to make it easier for customers to search for products on your ecommerce website.
Q6. Is it possible for me to create a more efficient sales process using AI in ecommerce?
A. Yes, you can employ AI to scan through petabytes of data and analyze it to predict customer preferences. It can help you offer relevant and helpful recommendations to individual customers, which will ultimately help you create a more efficient sales process.
Q7. Is it possible for me to implement virtual assistants while using AI in ecommerce?
A. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants have the ability to deliver in-store shopping experiences by working as virtual sales agents. They can help solve customer requests with ease throughout the day.
Q8. Is there any scope of improvement for product recommendations using AI in ecommerce?
A. Yes, using AI-powered software solutions, you can seamlessly figure out the likes and dislikes of customers by analyzing their behavioral data. This can help you suggest relevant products to them.
Leveraging AI solutions for ecommerce will help you deliver satisfactory shopping experiences to your customers.
They can help you provide intelligent product recommendations, resolve customer requests, and make it easier for them to find the products they need. AI solutions can also assist you with inventory management.
If you’ve got any questions about how to use AI solutions for your ecommerce business, ask them in the comments section.
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