Top 5 Ways Artificial Intelligence is Taking Ecommerce Industry by Storm

Ecommerce is a customer-first industry where only those businesses enjoy a great feat that stands high on customer experience, customer engagement, and customer convenience ladder. It’s pushing the Ecommerce stores to embrace the cutting-edge technologies to enrich the customer’s journey from onboarding to the checkout.

The Ecommerce industry has taken great strides with mobile apps and now, after m-commerce, the artificial intelligence that’s touted as the next biggest trend in the Ecommerce world is gearing up to transform the way online commerce operate and serve the customers with automation.

According to Gartner research, “AI technology tops the list of top 10 technology trends which created new waves in 2017 and helping businesses in several ways. The global market for AI is expected to grow by 94% from 2016, and reach $1.5 billion by 2019.”

The significant growth of artificial intelligence is due to its capability to make the sense out of the large amount of data that various customer touchpoints are generating. AI can better do the analysis of big data and forecast the outcomes out of the various actions, which help retailers to understand the pain points and find out how they can be turned into attractions. It’s the reason why retailers are embracing AI technology with open arms.

Before delving into the depth of AI trends that are driving the Ecommerce industry, let’s take a sneak peek at what the Artificial intelligence is:

AI is the set of technologies that make the machines intelligent enough to carry out the functions that humans perform by sensing, learning, understanding and acting on the data in a couple of seconds. The AI engines are making a valuable contribution to the myriad of the industry verticals and anticipated to become the next frontier of the technology that drives the business.

70% of the UK retailers think that AI- the deep learning and machine learning technology implementation would enable the eCommerce store to raise the bar of success along with customers.

Take a glance at the results that will benefit the eCommerce stores with the integration of artificial intelligence:

Benefits of using Artificial Intelligence In eCommerce

Personalization is a key to meet the customers’ needs precisely

Personalization is not a unique term that you are reading for the first time. Most of the online retailers make recommendations or send customized notifications to the customers based on the purchase history, demographics, micro-interactions or other parameters. But, the filters collect the data from one channel that incapacitates the retailers to offer a seamless customer experience.

With AI, it’s totally achievable by gathering the data from the multiple channels; identifying the patterns in customers purchase behavior, transactions, and other threads; and analyzing every customer touch points individually to target the offers to a single customer.

Personalize the shopping experience to let the customers shop in a personal way.

Facilitate the customer to shop under the virtual assistant guidance

Just speak a few words and the customers will be able to view the items on the screen and the assistant will buy them on the behalf of customers. It sounds implausible. Right? And, if you are one of the Amazon prime members then you have certainly experienced it.

Yes, with artificial intelligence, voice search and voice shopping is the future of eCommerce business. The virtual buying assistants will become the personal shopper for the customers that will inform them about a drop in price for the items they wanted to buy, make recommendations for the products which suit their lifestyle or search the items that customers want to see based on the cognitive data derived from AI. It seems Sci-Fi turning into reality.

The intelligent assistants work faster than humans and perform human-like interactions with the customers by analyzing the data in the minimum time, which boost customer engagement.

Visual search takes the driver’s seat

The image search is redefining the way customers make a search for the product online. It’s merging the offline world with the online world by allowing the customers to snap the picture of the product they like to have and then get the precise results for the similar products on the E-store by just uploading the image.

Leveraging AI technology, the visual search through mobile reads the color, size, shape, type, brand, and fabric of the product to display similar or complementary products in no time. The visual search seizes the opportunity for the retailers to boost sales efficiency by reinventing the way customers look for the items.

For instance, Tesla is on the mission of developing its own AI chip to be integrated into the self-driving cars, that’s based on capturing images and image processing. This AI trend is expected to skyrocket in E-commerce industry as well.

Social chatbots to foster customer interaction

Akin to shopping assistants, the customers also have a need for assistants who will respond their queries and help them throughout their shopping journey. Here, intelligent chatbots will take the place of a personal assistant that communicates with the customers in a human way that adds a personal touch to the interaction.

According to BI intelligence report, by 2020, 85% of all the customer interactions will be handled without interacting with humans.

The AI chatbots not just answer by making a standard response to the customers while making the interactions interesting by identifying the customer’s needs and providing a tailored response to them in an automated way. Also, it aids in delivering unmatched customer services within budget.

Double the marketing performance with experience marketing

With Artificial Intelligence in the picture, the business decisions will no more a guessing game. The E-commerce stores gain the insights from the plethora of information in the hands and initiate the action, but making the merchandising decision on their own gut due to the delay in the data analysis and reporting would bring a great loss to them. AI is one of the efficient ways to analyze big data and perform data processing dynamically.

The smart marketers jump on the AI bandwagon to create and distribute the marketing content across different channels that people actually care about with a deep understanding of the rudimentary elements that make the content great. The consistent real-time insights on business performance, market conditions, and exciting opportunities helps in creating strategic decisions that take Ecommerce marketing efforts to new heights and lets the E-stores be a star with improved sales.

Epilogue

The convergence of artificial intelligence and Ecommerce industry is certain to make a splash in the online shopping universe. All five predictions have showcased the groundbreaking changes that the advent of AI will bring to the online commerce of different scales and change the way Ecommerce operates in near future.

When your customers are ready for AI, then why don’t you open the doors for the technology to make the shopping experience personal, the customer service superior and profits double. Are you ready to embrace the AI change?

Adarsh Nair

The world is now very much compact, we call it Global Village as a result of digitization and this impresses him! He likes to explore the nooks and corners of the incessantly modernizing world and marvel technologies. He leads the Digital Marketing Team at Prismetric. His passion for digital trends taught him the knack of reaching the huge digital mass to find business opportunities instantly. He writes articles about digital, technical and marketing tactics for business enhancements.