Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be seen everywhere in this current generation. From automating billing and invoices to enabling high-end verification and security measures, AI is contributing greatly to enhance the scopes in every industry. This can be seen in the ecommerce sector as well.
The technological advancements of the modern era have changed the traditional marketing strategies of businesses significantly. Consumers expect more from an online seller nowadays and rely on them for almost everything rather than visiting a brick and mortar store. This makes it important for ecommerce sellers to be equipped with the right tools and technologies to stay competitive in the market. Using AI software is one of the most effective measures in that regard.
How Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing the Ecommerce Industry
Every ecommerce business has to be available round-the-clock to furnish the varying demands of customers in the best possible way. Artificial Intelligence can help you to achieve this and do a lot more by acquiring data in real-time. Many big names in the ecommerce industry have already adopted AI to improve their reach and offer better user engagement. This, in turn, helps them to generate more potential leads, which means more revenue.
AI can help to streamline online selling platforms and can go a long way to boost productivity and growth. Here are 5 ways in which AI is redefining the ecommerce industry.
Voice Assistants
The evolution of smart speakers and integrated voice assistants has made online shopping much more convenient for customers. People also use voice commands on their smartphones to look for their preferred products. This not just allows them to multi-task but also helps to find the best products for the most affordable prices.
AI makes it simpler for voice commands to communicate with web services. It also makes the search engines smarter and monitors the browsing patterns of users to offer personalized results. This way, your ecommerce site can deliver the most relevant products for the searches of your customers, which helps to improve conversion rates.
Want to discover how does voice assistant work? This guide for beginners will give you the answer!
Tailored Recommendations
Recommending similar products that a customer may be interested in is one of the most basic marketing strategies of ecommerce businesses. With the help of AI, these recommendations can be made more apt and customized as per the shopping behaviors of the user. This helps to boost the chances of conversion much more than simply recommending a random product.
AI can help you to track many different parameters to make sure that the recommendations are tailored for your customer. This may include the previously bought products by the user, the ones he/she liked or rated, the time when the user is more likely to buy a product, etc.
AI can also compare the shopping activities of a customer with others to understand the changes in interest and offer a more personalized product recommendation. This makes the shopping experience more engaging for customers, while helping your ecommerce business to promote other products and generate more sales.
Image Recognition
Doing an object search by image is the new norm in the ecommerce industry. Customers find this option very handy in comparison to typing the brand name and other details on the search box when looking for a product. When combined with voice search, the image search feature makes it much easier for customers to find exactly what they are looking for.
Image recognition is, in fact, one of the core functionalities of AI technology and has been used in many other industries as well. Many ecommerce companies even allow customers to upload pictures to the site. The AI algorithms then run a reverse image search to find the most relevant products on the platform. In addition, deep learning allows the AI algorithms to suggest sub-categories that the customer can choose for more refined results.
Some ecommerce sites even include a “virtual fitting room” for customers combining the image recognition feature and AI technology. This allows users to see how the selected garment or accessory will look on them by uploading their photos on the site. This, when coupled with personalized recommendations, can make the shopping experience more engaging for the customer.
Chatbots
Automated chatbots can help to offer round-the-clock assistance to customers. The chatbot can offer all the relevant solutions for a customer’s query or grievance. Besides, the bots will redirect the conversation to a customer service staff for further assistance only if the user demands it. This reduces the workload on the customer care personnel.
Chatbots can help customers to make buying decisions as well. It can be either via text chats or through a call. Recent studies even say that customers feel it more comfortable to communicate with chatbots for finding a solution. This allows them to receive more personalized product recommendations, look for trending products, and find available discounts easily.
Ecommerce businesses can employ Natural Language Processing to define the path of their chatbots. Together with text classifiers and artificial neural networks, Natural Language Understanding can help bots to understand the query of the customer properly, while Natural Language Generation helps to offer a relevant and helpful solution for that.
Remarketing
Remarketing refers to targeting those customers, who have shown an interest in a particular product but have not bought it. This is usually done by follow-up marketing messages, which can be more effective when AI takes charge. Artificial Intelligence analyzes the viewing patterns of the customer and saves the information for tailored suggestions later when the user visits the site.
AI learns the behaviors and shopping habits of the user over time, and interacts with smarter ads and notifications when something comes up that could interest the customer. This offers you a higher return on your investment since AI-powered remarketing engages users who are more likely to make a purchase.
It is evident how Artificial Intelligence is reshaping the ecommerce industry with improved user engagement and higher conversion rates. The above-mentioned are just a few of the many benefits that AI brings to the table. There are a lot more benefits of implementing AI in your ecommerce platform, which would help you to effectively manage your marketing strategies and generate more revenue.
Author bio: Tony believes in building technology around processes, rather than building processes around technology. He specializes in custom software development company, especially in analysing processes, refining it and then building technology around it. He works with clients on a daily basis to understand and analyze their operational structure, discover (and not invent) key improvement areas and come up with technology solutions to deliver an efficient process.