Over the years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped transform the business models of many enterprises and brands. Every year, new advances in technology are being made in different industries.
Integrating AI in eCommerce has helped to increase the market standards for many companies. Identifying different patterns in consumer behavior and analyzing data sets with the help of AI, has led to the creation of a more personalized experiences for consumers.
How exactly has artificial intelligence gained a foothold in the world of eCommerce?
Marketing of eCommerce
Marketing any business requires expertise. Artificial Intelligence provides cost-effective solutions that assists in the marketing of various products and brands. Businesses can offer their marketing campaigns and plans to Artificial Intelligence platforms such as Bind, Google Adwords, Facebook and others, through which marketing operations can be handled quite efficiently. These solutions help businesses to utilize their marketing budget most feasibly and help to minimize Cost Per Click.
Offer Services at Lower Costs
AI services are quite affordable. They help to improve the customer’s shopping experience, as well as to automate daily processes. A Chatbot is an example of the most cost-effective service provided by AI. How? Chatbots are software designed to act as a medium of interaction between service providers and consumers. A company can use this software to resolve queries and to answer questions that customers have in real-time. This can help to decrease response time.
Companies and businesses can also reduce the cost of hiring new customer care staff as Chatbots can perform all tasks associated with customer care in real-time. Therefore, Chatbots help in developing a customer-centric approach.
Chatbots are enhancing the impact of AI, by providing good customer support through capabilities such as:
- Providing consumers with targeted or personalized offers
- Self-learning capabilities, helps them improve with time
- Address customer needs through deeper insights
- NLP (Natural language processing) helps to interpret voice-based interactions with consumers
AI Can Be Used in Sales and Lead Generation
The most significant use of Artificial Intelligence is for generating sales. It tracks the purchasing patterns of consumers and extracts their data from eCommerce platforms. If such tasks were left to humans, it would take many hours and manpower to collect data and track customer behavior. These tasks have been simplified by AI, lowering the burden. This has helped companies increase sales and generate more leads.
Virtual and Voice Assistance
Over the years, Artificial Intelligence has focused on providing customers with more interactive solutions. By providing voice assistance in real-time, AI has largely contributed to improving the user experience. This makes it easy for service providers to interact with their customers with ease.
Some popular virtual assistants include Siri, The Google Assistant, and Alexa. A growing number of eCommerce companies are now focusing on adding virtual assistants to their platforms. Virtual assistants are designed to interpret and understand messages that customers leave, and can also process native languages.
AI has transformed how consumers process their purchases. A good example is when “My Starbucks Barista” was launched some years back. It allowed customers to use voice commands to place orders. Companies can use personalized data extracted by Artificial Intelligence like the customers’ preferences and purchase history, to send recommendations and offers to their customers.
Provision of Personalized Recommendations
AI uses emails, pop-ups, and text messages to provide consumers with product recommendations. Searches made by consumers are tracked to understand their behavior. Artificial Intelligence is also used to display ads and images of products on social media platforms and search engines that relate to the interest of the user.
Brands in return enjoy increased returns on investment due to improved ratings and reviews. Companies such as Netflix and Amazon use view history and data from past purchases, to recommend different movies and products to their consumers.
Visual Search Engine
Visual search engines are becoming more popular and are being used in the eCommerce sector as well. The AI helps users to search for anything they want with a single click. The visual representation of products is more appealing to consumers and they are more inclined to buy since they can now view the color, design, dimensions, and size of the product they wish to order. This move has helped to improve the consumers experience of offerings from the brand.
Benefits of Recommending Product to Customers
eCommerce platforms can benefit in multiple ways by recommending product:
- Provide a personalized shopping experience to online shoppers
- Improved sales and customer retention
- Higher numbers of return clients
- Enable personalized business email campaigns
Other Ways in Which Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming the Ecommerce Industry
- AI is providing solutions that are creating a seamless and consistent customer experience across brick-and-mortar as well as online stores. For example, AI-based omni-channel solutions are utilized to combine machine and AI learning, computer vision, and natural language processing to reduce the gap between online and in-store customer experiences.
- AI-based data analytic tools provide a host of benefits such as online sale analysis, customer profiling, etc. and allows a business to increase their intelligence of customer requirements.
- AI-enabled supply Chain Automation can assist in the effective management of supply chains for eCommerce platforms. Businesses can make decisions based on market needs, delivery schedules, and vendors.
- AI-enabled email marketing can send out marketing emails for services or products that are of interest to the recipient. Such email marketing tools are more aligned to address individual consumer needs and allow for intelligent user analysis based on the responses received. These emails appear more human than automated.
Endnote
The points above show how Artificial Intelligence contributes to eCommerce. Many small and large businesses have transformed themselves by adopting AI. Many more are projected to take similar steps in the future. There is no doubt that AI has secured its place in transforming day to day activities. Experts project that major tech companies who offer eCommerce development services will use Artificial Intelligence as a major theme to drive innovations. Many such companies are making huge investments in AI ventures. It is projected that in 2020, 85% of consumer interaction will need no inputs from humans.