In today’s so-called smart era when everything is getting virtual, the implementation of Artificial Intelligence in e-Commerce is a remarkable movement towards progress. By adopting the AI technology, e-commerce businesses are creating a boom in the market.
Artificial Intelligence is somewhat a challenge to the creative power of a human being. It aims to achieve something which at times becomes tedious for human employees. With the right coding, it learns faster and better than compared to humans.
The absence of emotional issues and health-related restrictions allow it to think logically and perform better. It has the power to detect any fraudulent activity which might be overlooked by humans. It can interact with human users and predetermine their needs.
For a strong understanding of the behavior of human users and to provide the customers with a satisfactory experience, the e-commerce companies are reportedly adopting the new AI technology. Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce has now emerged as an individual business solution and is dominating the market.
Now the question lies in the part that how are the business companies improvising this unique and innovative technology?
Let us know have a look at the below list of the eight crucial ways to justify the statement:
1. Identifies Potential Customers and Re-target Them:
Many a time, the sales team fails to keep track of the leading products and services in the market and hence could not impress potential buyers who might have an interest in the item. AI manages all such customer data and makes a note of the time spent by him on a specific product.
Based on this information, AI responds to the next visit of such potential buyers and highlights any offer or deals available with the product searched previously. This would surely help to flourish your eCommerce business.
2. AI Analyses Customer’s Data and Recommends Products:
Based on the purchase history and search inquiries of a customer, AI analyses the records and offers product recommendations. It helps to stimulate the customers to return to the site again and the visitors to remain in the place for long. This makes a sure shot target fulfilled, and the customers end up buying the product. Finally, the customers feel satisfied, and in turn, the retailers earn revenue.
3. Application of AI in eCommerce Chatbot Index:
The all-new AI Chatbot is a powerful tool which is programmed to be conversant with the customers and settle them with thoughtful solutions. It has learning capabilities and hence understands the needs of the customers. It is a cost-effective way to serve customers.
By analyzing the particular query of the customer, it directs them to the targeted products. AI chatbot runs 24×7 and successfully gives a feeling of personal touch. Hence it is much accepted by the customers.
4. AI Generates Description of The Products:
Product description forms the heart and soul of an e-commerce business. Based on the product description, the customers decide to make any purchase. If the details match his requirements, the customer even chooses to ignore the product image and orders it instantly.
Writing down the enormous description is toilsome and time-consuming. AI generates an automated report of products by hunting into the related contents from the internet. AI uses the keyword to research and finds its relevant details.
It can create and modify the product description as and when required. This is a cost-effective and convenient process for any business team.
5. AI Performance Is Device Independent :
Artificial Intelligence in e-commerce brings about a new way of personalization which carries out irrespective of the device. For instance, a user generally searches for a product in the portal of a particular website through his computer system as well as mobile devices. In some cases, he might fail to find the product availability due to conditions like being out of stock or yet to be launched in the market.
AI keeps a track record of such browsing history of the user. Whenever the product gets launched or becomes available on the website, AI brings about a push notification in all the devices wherever the user has logged in.
This multi-channel marketing strategy enhances the customers’ experience as he is able to make the purchase directly through the portable device.
6. AI Could Combat Fake Reviews :
Selling of a product highly depends on the customer reviews and feedback of the product. Customers, who cannot physically examine a particular item, solely takes the decision according to the previous ratings of the product. AI operates on a smart learning system which verifies the whole functioning. It identifies fake reviews and boosts the reviews of verified customer purchase.
7. Autonomous Robot in The Warehouse :
Improvisation of the automated robots in the warehouses has changed the entire scenario of the stores. The robots greet the visitors and guide them with relevant information regarding the product while they take a tour of the warehouse.
They are even programmed to assist their human counterparts during the dispatching and shipping of the product. Their efficiency is significant, and they reduce the cost of employees too. In addition to that, they relieve the experienced storekeepers to enable them to get into more meaningful activities.
8. AI Generates Post Sales Report :
The automated customer service solutions segment of the AI in eCommerce looks after the post-sale services. They create a follow-up process which is automatic. In this process, AI handles all sorts of after-sale issues like warranty period related queries, complaints, returns, and refunds.
Off late, Artificial Intelligence in e-commerce has brought about a revolutionary solution. We are even more excited about what the future has in store. It gives us the freedom to deal more with our soft skills while AI handles the software-oriented features.
It undoubtedly increases sales and revenue and opens up new opportunities. Hence this AI in eCommerce is the latest smart technology that will bring about an enormous transformation in our lives, which is worth welcoming.
9. Artificial Intelligence in Image search
Ever come across a situation where you liked any product or item but didn’t know what it is called or what it is? Artificial Intelligence services ease this task for you. The concept of image search is much more implemented in the eCommerce websites only with the application of Artificial Intelligence. AI has made it possible to understand the images.
Buyers can even easily make a search on the basis of photographs. Mobile apps of eCommerce websites can find the product by just pointing the camera towards the product. This even eliminates the need for the searches on the keyword.
10. Handling Customer Data
Ecommerce platforms have two things in abundance as of now. One is an endless list of products, and other is data. Ecommerce has to deal with a loss of data on a day to day basis. This data can be anything just like the daily sales, a number of orders, the total number of items sold received in an area or even as a whole, and whatnot. It has to take care of the customer data also. Handling a large amount of information is not possible for a human. AI cannot just help to collect this data in a more structured form but also generate the proper insights out of this data.
This even helps in understanding the customer behavior of the whole population as well as of the individual buyer. Understanding the customer buying pattern can even make the eCommerce to makes changes wherever needed and thus predicting the next buy of the user also.
11. Recommendation Systems
Have you ever experienced how the eCommerce websites like the Amazon and Flipkart are continually showing the products which are much more similar you just checked in? Well, this is the application of the AI in eCommerce, AI, and machine learning algorithms can predict the behaviour of the buyer from its past searches, frequently bought products and likings.
By merely predicting the action of the user, e-commerce websites are able to recommend the products that the user is also much more profoundly interested in. This even improves the user experience as the user no longer have to spend lots of hours searching for the product. It also helps the eCommerce websites to improve their sales.
12. Inventory management
The inventory management is one of the essential areas in any type of businesses. You have to keep yourself updated with how much inventory you keep on holding and how much more is needed. There are lots of product categories over the eCommerce website.
Thus, keeping an eye on the stock of all the products daily is not possible for a human manually. This is where the AI comes into the picture. AI application has even helped the eCommerce industry in managing the inventory.
Thus, the inventory management system will get better over time to time. AI system builds a correlation between future demand and current demand.
13. Cybersecurity
AI in eCommerce has also improved the cybersecurity of the eCommerce websites. As it can even prevent the detect any of the fraudulent activities. Ecommerce companies have to deal with a lot of transactions on a day to day basis.
Hackers and Cybercriminals can hack the user account to gain some of the unauthenticated access. This can even lead to the exposure of private information and data with web fraud. The reputation of the enterprises also gets a big blow. To prevent this, AI and Machine Learning, natural language processing algorithms are developed that can even mitigate the chances of
14. Better Decision Making
Nowadays, e-commerce can make more decisions with the application of AI. Data analysis have to handle a lot of data on a day to day basis. This amount of data is too huge for them to feel at that point in time. Furthermore, analyzing the information also becomes a challenging task.
AI has fastened the decisions making the process of the eCommerce. AI algorithms can even be able to quickly identify the intricate patterns in the data by predicting user behavior and their purchasing pattern as well.
15. After Sales Service
Selling the product is not just enough. The business has to aid the customer in the complete business cycle. After the sales service is an integral part of the after-sales service. AI application can automate the feedback form, handling, and replacements of any other ambiguity in the product. By keeping an eye on the buyer’s issues, the brand value of the website gets improved.
16. CRM
In the past, Customer Relationship Management relied on the people to collect various amount of data in order to use and manage the data and service the clients. But today, AI in e-commerce can predict which users are most likely to make a purchase and how can we much more engagement with them.
AI applications can help in identifying the trends and plan the actions according to the latest trends, which is revolving. With the help of AI and ML algorithms, advanced CRM can even learn and improve over time.
17. Sales Improvement
AI applications can generate and predict the accurate forecast on the eCommerce business. The study of the data analytics, historical data, and latest trends can even help in optimizing the resource allocation, built a healthy pipeline, and analyze the performance of a team. The supervisors and managers can get a better insight into the latest trends in sales and marketing. They can explain the trends and can improve sales by making strategies well before time.
18. Predict Services or Sales
If you search on the internet about how AI can help the e-commerce sector, then in most of the search results you will find out that AI can help the online store owners to predict the sales or services.
Instead of working out with you through the massive data sets, you can easily find your customer behaviour patterns with the practical usage of Artificial Intelligence.
The global leader in online entertainment media service, Netflix is making the use of AI, and they are successful in predicting what their user wants to view.
One of the largest takeaways that you can take from this point is that once you can automate the interpretation & collection of information, AI can help you in the prediction of sales.
19. Provide World-Class Service
If you are a part of a Magento and woo-commerce development company for an extended period of time, then you must have dealt with many of the eCommerce projects where the store owners are utilizing the benefits of AI in eCommerce to enhance their customer service.
For offering the world-class service on your online storefront, you can even make use of the various AI chatbots, which takes its basis on the algorithms and principles of AI and which will assist your customers each and every time.
The chatbots can even help you to save a lot of money by speeding up the response time, freeing up humans from the challenging tasks, and offering solutions to most of the question’s routine.
Chatbots adds a touch of personalization in your online store, which even creates an opportunity to increase sales. At the same point in time, it offers world-class customer services.
20. Increase Customer Satisfaction Ratio & Sales
The role of the AI in e-commerce is not limited to providing world-class customer service. The chatbots based on AI can also help you in improving the customer satisfaction ratio.
The human style interaction by the chatbots can help you to understand the pain points of customers. Once you have identified the pain points, you will work on it to offer the next level services as per the requirements of the customer.
It will even lead to a higher customer satisfaction ratio, which in turn will help you to steep increase your overall sales by a drastic design.
For example, The Starbucks Chatbot which one can easily find in the company mobile application, which makes it easier for the user places the order. It will also help you to tell you the time when your order will be ready and how much you have to pay for that.
Just like to Starbucks, Pizza Hut have revealed a Facebook Messenger and Twitter app where they are making the analyze the use of chatbot to track orders. The users can also reorder their favorite pizza, ask any question, and see the latest trends.
21. Scale Personalized Contents
Instead of writing the algorithms or randomly guessing what your customers would like to see, Machine Learning & AI should be used to offer personalized and trending content.
AI will also assist you in scaling up those content according to the customer pain points, countries, channels, brands, etc.
Optimizing the shopping experience is the aim of all the web store owners. Moreover, few e-commerce giants can even translate this dream into reality. One of the largest eCommerce stores, Amazon is one of those rarities who has excelled in this part.
With the rise of the fully-featured AI platforms like the Salesforce Listen and Adobe Experience Cloud, many small and medium scale eCommerce websites have been able to offer the shopping experience which you generally observe at the Amazon.
22. Optimize Searches & Recommendations
Optimizing recommendations and searches are one of the most popular applications of AI in the eCommerce sector. For implementing and using this functionality on your online storefront, you should even hire a woo-commerce developer. They should be able to let you know on this project.
Most of the users would search for a particular item on your web storefront, and if they are not able to find it using the natural language, then it will be considered as experience with lousy shopping. In today scenario, the modern and usage of search boxes won’t seal the deal for you. You need to optimize your recommendations and search box for that purpose; AI comes into the picture.
23. Automate Back-Office Processes
It is perhaps one of the best instances of using the AI in eCommerce. The back-office tasks such as the manual mapping of products as well as the management of the product data. Functions like these can be an error-prone and time consuming as well.
To reduce the pressure and workload, you should focus on automating these tasks. For that purpose, the role of Artificial Intelligence comes into the picture. Most of the e-commerce is making the use of the image recognition technology for the product categorization.
Moreover, Pinterest is using this technology to help its users search for a specific item within the photo. By automating the back-office processes, you can even reduce your workload and at the same point of time, can give more time to some other complicated tasks.
24. Retargeting Potential Customers
As per the study carried out, around 35% of the sales and marketing leads are not followed up by the team handled by the sales. It means that your side of sales has missed those persons who can be your potential buyer, which affects both the revenue and sales.
Besides that, there are many other eCommerce businesses which have unmanageable customers data, and due to that, they even miss out on lots of great insights.
That is where an AI can come to your rescue, as it will even automate the whole sales process and offer you with some customer behavior patterns which you can use the retarget the customers.
Now, the question is, what would be running through the head, how AI can help you in retargeting? So, let’s analyze that aspect first. Nowadays, many of the online stores are using the facing recognition capture the customer dwell time in the physical stores.
That is where the role of the Ai comes into the play, as it even allows you to predict the goods which one could target for the particular needs based on the pattern of behavior. As you already know, the face of sales of changing dynamically, and that is where Artificial Intelligence can help you to stand out from the rest.
25. Identify Exceptional Target Prospects
The analysis of predictive is one of the latest and biggest USP’s of the AI which could be utilized to identify some of the excellent target prospects for your e-commerce business.
Predictive marketing giant Mintigo offers AI solutions for the sales, CRM, and marketing systems. With the help of Minitigo solutions, Getty images have been able to generate high quality leads for their business by using the data, which shows the competitive analysis.
With the millions of records of the customer, Getty images have decided to integrate the AI into their system to find the usage patterns, and they have reaped rich rewards out of that.
26. Create an Efficient Sales Process
As of now, we have moved on from the era of old sales tactics where it was about picking some of the yellow pages and contacting the potential clients with the help of cold calling. Nowadays, customers get attracted by some of the live visuals which they usually get on various social media platforms.
In today’s market, where there is a cut-throat competition, you need to have an out of the box sales process for your business. For that purpose, integrating the AI into your CRM will be of great help. There are many of the AI solutions where the natural languages and voice inputs are enabled.
Due to this kind of scenario, the Customer Relationship Management software will be able to answer the queries of the customer and solve their burning problems in a better manner which even creates with an opportunity for the sales and marketing team to grow the business. Some of the AI-driven systems can also handle more than one task at a given point of time.
27. Bridge The Gap Between Personalization & Privacy
Whenever we talk about the personalization, there is often a trade-off with concern to the privacy policy of the user. User privacy has been a topic of speech in the last few years.
Many of the brands are striving for security, transparency, and honesty while interacting with customers. Moreover, while in the race of achieving privacy, they can’t even compromise on the process of personalization.
Now the questions which come that gives them sleepless nights to the online store owners is how to solve this issue?
The answer is by making the effective use of the AI. Users are always most of the time willing to their personal information if they are getting something valuable in return. For example, Google Now makes the use of AI and synchronize the emails, Calendar, and search habits. In return, they offer you a small briefing of what you will get as per the schedule. So, for this type of scenario, the user does not mind giving access to some of the personal information.
28. Better Communication with Customers
Communication is the key! The key to more sales is communication. Communication with the customers. You need to engage with the customers to know more about their need and thoughts process. By helping with answering their questions, which is related to your products, you can even win their trust. A trusting customer always makes a purchase. But, how the AI will help you in communicating with the customers? Well, the answer is chatbots.
Thus developing a good chatbot will help you to retain the visitor and convert that visitor into your customer. You can develop a small and intelligent chatbot which can even totally understand your customers and offer them with the right assistance.
AI and Natural Language Processing have helped understanding customers in a better way. If a customer drops a messaging asking about the shipping time, then the chatbot should be easily able to answer that question correctly and provide the customers with an enriching experience.
29. Voice Command
Voice command is the part of a machine that is programmed to identify phrases and words in both the spoken and written language, and then it converts them to a machine-readable format. This software has a limited part of phrases and vocabulary words; they may only help to identify only if they are pronounced in a nicely and spoken very in a transparent way.
This recognition works using the algorithms with the language and acoustic modeling. Acoustic modeling most of the explains more about the relationship between the linguistic units of audio and speech wave signals.
The modeling language compares the sounds with the world sequences to rectify the difference between the words and similar sounds. It is very high in demand as of now that there are few of the names which you can find this voice command assistant around us like the Siri and Alexa.
30. Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is an engineered entity residing in software that connects with the interface to communicate human in a human-understandable way. It is a procedure where this software agent performs tasks or service for an individual. These virtual assistants are mostly known by the name a Chatbots which are highly recommended for the customer support with the online chat.
The virtual assistant has some other capabilities too, which is even expanding rapidly on different phases also with the help of voice user interface. This collaboration with a virtual assistant can even boost up your business to the next level.
It is revealed that an extra hand can always be helpful to work with a new set of ideas. Virtual assistants (VA) are so skilled that they can work in a set of multiple areas, and they can focus on a wide range of tasks simultaneously.
31. Re-targeting
Among the best sales concept, potential retargeting customers hold great essential. According to research, the sales staff does not nurture around 33% of the leads. It means that a business might be missing on several potential buyers that may be actually interested in your offerings of product or services.
Furthermore, various business is imbued with the unorganized customer’s data that can even actually help in improving the understanding of customer buying behavior, sales intelligence, and thus building customer insights.
For example, CCTV cameras have been used for a long time by the retailers to identify shoplifters and thefts. Moreover, how come often and make purchases. Afterward, they can see if a customer spends more time on the iOS and Android device, identifying their preferences towards the individual products. Later on, a retailer can provide special offers to the specific customer on products that they prefer more.
32. Build an ‘assortment intelligence’ tool
Customers are forcing most of the retailers to change their pricing strategies. Moreover, it is imperative that multichannel retailers apply flexibility when it comes to their pricing structuring in order for them to retain the customers.
Retailers are turning to assortment intelligence, which is a tool that facilitates an unprecedented level of 24/7 visibility and valuable insights into the competitor’s product assortments. Businesses can even monitor their competitor’s product mix, which would also be segmented by brand and product as well as the percentage of overlap. This intelligence tool then offers a business with the ability to quickly adjust their own product mix and pricing with high accuracy.
An impressive competitive advantage that provides complete visibility into what products are being offered in the market. The intelligence software even helps retailers in a strong position to make specific assortment, track the business impact of those actions, and planning decisions.
33. Tackle fake reviews
Any experienced online retailer will be able to tell you of at least one painful story about the reciting counterfeit reviews for their brand.
Users nowadays are flooded with an abundance of advertising each and every day, which can become overwhelming, and this will often delay their decisions. This is where word of mouth has become much more valuable. If a customer’s friend has purchased your product and had a positive experience, then the customer will end up buying the product too.
In fact, according to the report, a staggering 90% of respondents who recalled reading online feedback claimed that positive online feedback influenced buying decisions. More essentially 86% revealed that buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.
What are these reviews fake? AI can be used to manage this issue, and here is how.
In terms of creating fake feedback or reviews, it is well known as ‘astroturfing,’ and it is widespread across the many sites and services which includes the Amazon. By using, astroturfing is the practice of creating a fake or deceptive review or feedback that a reasonable customer would sometimes believe to be a trusted and neutral, third party testimonial.
Customer reviews have become one of the significant cornerstones of trust in the world of online shopping. When users cannot physically see what the products are like before they buy them, the ratings and reviews of the user who have supposedly bought them before can break or make a product. Some of the e-commerce retailers are with the AI to fight to AstroTurf by putting more emphasis on the helpful and verified reviews.
Amazon works on the AI to combat fake product reviews and inflation of their favorite star ratings. Built-in house, their AI machine learning system make sure that the prominence and weight of the verified customer purchase reviews are boosted. There is also a preference to those reviews that are marked as a helpful by other users as well as some of the newer up to date critiques on its site. The business is even reviewing the several review characteristics such as ratings to detect fake feedback. They are much more critical to the company as they help to build customer trust in Amazon.
Conclusion
AI has not been a large part of the emerging technology anymore, it has now matured a lot, and today it has become the better need of the hour as fast the eCommerce sector is concerned.
Moreover, there are some of the challenges for the adoption of AI that may make implementation difficult. For many, retailers, successfully using the AI, may require partnering with the third parties. This has even encouraged many of the emergings AI e-commerce startups which help the organizations in harnessing the power of AI to attract their customers in a much better way.
