How to unlock the power of AI for your Ecommerce platform?

Think of the last experience you had while shopping from Amazon. Isn’t that just click, pay, collect? Everything has become so simple and on the fingertips. Have you ever wondered how?

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

If you own an e-commerce store and are yet not aware of the role of Al in eCommerce; you’ve already missed a lot of customers all this time.

But it’s never too late. In this article, we’ll share some noticeable ways by which you can benefit your online store from AI to its highest potential with minimal effort.

Not to mention how AI and ML started dominating the digital marketplace. The past few years – especially amidst pandemic – have seen a rapid increase in the implementation of AI in the eCommerce world. Online stores are becoming smarter. They tend to understand their customers better than the supermarket retailer. This is why people are turning more and more to the digital shopping experience.

Recent studies say that 85% of purchasing interactions in digital stores will be human-less by 2025.

All leading brands are gardening huge profits with the use of Artificial Intelligence in their online stores. AI has effortlessly expanded their market and led them to new… even bigger opportunities.

How AI and ML Works?

Typically, Artificial intelligence is a technology that makes the system think as human brains do. Artificial Intelligence is a set of algorithms that study the provided data and generate the best relevant results. This technology is widely used to solve complex problems and perform complex tasks in a way any savvy must do.

Commonly AI and ML are misunderstood as similar concepts. However, that’s not true. AI is a technology of which Machine learning is a part. AI uses the input data and comprehends it to provide required solutions. While Machine learning is a concept that enables machines to learn from past trends and predict future outcomes. And therefore, improve their algorithms on their own without the interference of humans. ML is a process of making AI technology more innovative and flexible.

Role of AI in Ecommerce

Every customer has their own taste and preferences. It may not be easy to interact with them and understand their needs efficiently when on two different screens. We know it’s so difficult to retain and engage your site visitors. The more complicated part is evaluating why customers leave your website without checking out.

Moreover, Trends in the market are ever-changing. Staying active with those trends requires detailed analytical studies. If you are not regularly updating your online store, your competitors can take advantage of this and capture your market share in no time.

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning can help save you time and effort and scale up your brand. An AI-driven approach is used to leverage customers’ experience and encounter more sales conversion.

#1 Customer-centric Search

What if you type something in eCommerce search engines, and it generates irrelevant results? Will you stay on that site anymore? I guess NO!

AI systems use NLP (Natural language process) to deeply understand the context of an end-user and optimize the search results. To further simplify the customer’s search journey, visual search engines are widely used in many leading online apparel and furniture stores. AI operates intelligent searches to discover “look-alike” results using image recognition capabilities. This is called computer vision AI.

Pinterest lens reported more than 600 million visual searches per month within one year from its launch. Also, 90% of platform users pin their buying inspirations and find similar products on Amazon and other online stores.

In 2020, Pinterest even added a “shop tab” to its lens.

*Amazon also introduced visual search in its main IOS e-com app in 2014.

#2 Voice Commerce

Customers are waving off the time-taking ways to compare products and prices when shopping online. Smart speakers like Alexa and mobile voice assistants have made the life of digital customers easier. Users are enjoying headless interaction with the e-stores. They don’t even have to use their hands; just command, “ Hey Alexa, buy me this.”

According to a study by Gartner, brands that redesign their websites to support voice search experienced a rise of 30% in their e-commerce revenue. So include voice recognition in your digital store if you want to discover significant returns.

#3 Targeting Potential Leads

About 70% of marketing leads are not given significant attention by the sales team, resulting in missing the opportunity to target potential customers. Also, investing your marketing efforts in the right audience at the right time is essential. Poor targeting drives poor quality leads and brings about no conversion.

AI-driven targeting tools can save marketers a lot of time and effort by curating targeting strategies to reach their potential audience faster. By potential audience, I simply mean ones who want to buy and are looking for similar products. AI monitors how your site visitors interact with your site. Then provides only relevant solutions to enhance the customer’s experience. This way, you can fix the funnel cracks fairly quickly.

#4 Retargeting Existing Customers

Never forget to appreciate your existing customers!

It’s 7x more expensive to get a new customer than to retain an existing one.

AI is broadly used in many huge online retail websites like Amazon and Myntra to comprehend their existing customer’s behavior and yield revenue from repeat business. AI-data management tools track the customer’s purchase history and target/ retarget their potential customers accordingly.

Let’s say you have an online fashion store. Suppose a customer of yours has recently purchased a designer lehenga from your site. In that case, you can retarget this customer to buy jewelry, accessories, cosmetics, designer bags, etc., which goes well with that lehenga. This can help prevent your customers from going somewhere else and improve your sales cycle.

#5 Product Recommendations

According to HubSpot, 40% of buyers revisit online brands furnishing relevant product recommendations. AI makes intelligent predictions based on previous searches of the customer and thus recommend suitable product and services (predictive marketing). AI also deeply studies the customer’s behavior during prior visits, location, and retention time on a particular product and engages them in related items.

Personalized product recommendations lead to an increase in your eCommerce website’s overall engagement and conversion rate.

#6 Chatbots

Chatbots are the most common implementation of AI you have come across on various websites. While you cannot always address answers and solutions actively to all your website visitors, chatbots can. Therefore Chatbots can attend to all your customers of different time zones with 24*7 service.

Over 60% of buying decisions are influenced by Chatbots. Also, 70% of site visitors solve their queries through conversation with Chatbots. Moreover, chatbots are cost-effective and transparent. So keeping a bot to greet your visitors to your e-store is never a bad option.

#7 Identifying Target Prospects

“KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE”

That’s easier said than done.

Discovering the ideal prospects in the market is essential to level up your sales game. With such huge competition and data, the process of identifying ideal potentials is time taking. But if done strategically, this can lead you to enter and seize a new (even bigger) market.

That is why AI can do a lot for you to reach your target prospects. AI-enabled data mining softwares help to identify the pain points of the targeted eCommerce market and note down competitors’ brand gaps. This can be beneficial for filling those gaps and answering problems. And turning competitors’ customers into yours.

(We hope they don’t read our blog before you)

#8 Personalized Content

“ There are so many opportunities on the horizon, from mobile exclusives to geo-located offers to better filtering and searching. We’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible with personalization. ”

MICHELLE PELUSO

Chief Executive Officer of Gilt Groupe

Personalization is a key to converting your visitors to your long-term customers. Users like to stay on a website that provides the relevant content to relate with. Therefore It’s required to improve your retention time and remain competitive. 80% of customers are more likely to buy from brands that deliver personalized experiences.

Because of the easiness AI and ML serve, 46% of US marketers already use ML to personalize. ML keeps track of customers’ interaction with the website, studies the data provided by the customer during his last purchase, and then sends personalized emails or messages that will resonate the most.

#9 Automation

The main role of artificial intelligence in eCommerce is enabling the future of automatic performance. Machine Learning can perform repetitive tasks by itself and help to stay in with ongoing eCommerce trends. ML analyzes the past data about when there is a need to change stock on your shopping window, answer any feedback or review, etc., and then fulfills these tasks automatically.

It can also help automate the top-rated and best-selling products on top of your page. You can even automate seasonal sales and discounts on relevant products. ML-based tools can also help in dynamic pricing based on shifts in the market. It optimizes and recommends the best suitable pricing options according to your market’s demand.

#10 Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting influence many business decisions. Poor sales forecast can result in poor liquidity of your business to meet timely expenses. And Even 10% of accurate forecasting can benefit your business positively. But sales forecasting is deep and time taking process, and you cannot always rely on humanly assumptions.

AI-enabled management tools can help you in fast and accurate forecasting. Deep learning algorithms study sales patterns and predict future shifts in sales so that you can restock/stock up relevant inventory at the right time and invest in the right place.

#11 Filter Fake Reviews

Suppose you visit an online store and come across two similar products with the same price. What is the next thing you will consider?

Product rating and reviews, no doubt.

According to a study, online reviews dominate 85% of buying decisions. This means that your eCommerce site reviews can make or break a product. It is prevalent to experience that an attempt could be made to defame you. This practice of creating fake reviews is called “astroturfing”. While we cannot catch or identify those imposters every time for all our products, AI-based tools can. AI system detects and eliminates those fake reviews from genuine ones.

#12 Enhance Cybersecurity

Cyber security of your eCommerce store is essential for your brand’s image. Any site safe for its customers is a core to building a trust base. But managing these threats before it occurs isn’t a nursery rhyme. You need to be pro in understanding systems or be ready to call experts every time you get into trouble.

Machine Learning has simplified the process of identifying vulnerability points faster. With this, you can better protect your customer’s data, i.e., passwords or authentication processes (OTP). Also, ML can detect spam mail or messages, fake orders, etc., in the website’s inbox.

#13 Virtual Try-on

AI associated with AR had taken the e-commerce game to the next level. From Lenskart to Pepperfly, top eCommerce riders enable their customers to try the products in their self environments. This improves the customers’ decision-making process and delivers a more engaging customer experience. Customers love to visit online stores where they can experiment and explore more without moving from their chairs.

AI as Future of Ecommerce

So the point is clear. While humans are always easier to interact with, AI accelerates cognitive experience by faster learning, solving, and decision making. The future of AI in the eCommerce world is bright enough.

The thing to keep in mind is you must not input AI and ML in your online store just for the sake of it. AI must be implemented in a way to enhance customers’ shopping experience and leverage ROI.

Comment some other uses of AI you come across while visiting digital stores. We would love to add them to the above list.

Accelerate Your Online Store with AI!

Our experts are here to help you with your Ecommerce transformation. HB Websol specializes in delivering custom solutions for businesses around the globe. Whether you need an artificial intelligence eCommerce platform, Hybrid mobile store app, or AI-powered eCommerce solutions, we’ve got you covered.