Artificial intelligence is already changing the world as we speak. Its use cases and potential can change people’s lives with maximum comfort and automation.
When we talk about AI, we automatically imagine robots taking over mankind and doing everything by themselves.
Well, we are not there yet. And we would never want to be there. But we are in an era where we can comfortably order everything online, and the products are delivered right to our doorsteps in a few hours!
Just in India, in the last quarter of 2020. E-commerce thrived in the past couple of years, especially during the pandemic times it has allowed people to shop in the comfort of their houses. Special thanks to the best e-commerce solutions stores, delivery agents and agencies who made that possible.
E-Commerce Orders Volume Increased By 36%
If the e-commerce sector receives significant support from artificial intelligence, we can expect to see a significant transformation in the way online shopping operates, approximately 36%. The current state of AI already plays a crucial role in eCommerce operations, but the active participation of AI in activities like logistics, website development solutions, customer support, demand generation, and product fulfilment will lead to several benefits for both eCommerce businesses and customers.
Well, let’s ponder that question and see how AI in eCommerce will change the face of the online storefront.
How AI Will Change the Face of the Online Storefront?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already transforming the online storefront, and it will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few ways in which AI will change the face of the online storefront
1. By Making User Experience Hyper Personalized
Imagine what if you go to a local department store, for example, Walmart, and the salesperson starts giving you the same products that you want to purchase.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
With the advancements in AI and ML, online shopping can provide a personalized shopping experience that is tailored to each customer's preferences and needs. AI can analyze vast amounts of data, including customer behaviour, browsing history, and purchase patterns, to understand each customer's shopping preferences and recommend products that they are likely to be interested in. It will save you hours to go from rack to rack to find the products you want to buy from thousands of product catalogues.
Customers can receive product recommendations that are specifically tailored to their interests, making it easier to find what they are looking for and discover new products that they might not have found otherwise.
In addition to personalized product recommendations, AI-powered chatbots and virtual shopping assistants can provide customers with instant support and guidance. Customers can ask questions about products, receive styling advice, and get help with their purchases, just like they would from a salesperson in a physical store.
Moreover, AI can also use natural language processing and image recognition to understand customer queries and provide accurate and relevant search results. This can help customers find the products they are looking for quickly and easily, without having to navigate through multiple pages.
Now, this is not yet a reality in departmental stores. But this thing can certainly happen.
E-commerce stores
AI and ML can transform the online shopping experience by enabling dynamic and personalized shopping experiences for consumers.
Using AI and ML, online retailers can analyze vast amounts of customer data, including browsing and purchase history, to understand each customer's shopping preferences and behaviour. This enables retailers to offer personalized product recommendations that complement a customer's past purchases, making it easier for them to discover new products and make informed purchasing decisions.
In addition to personalized product recommendations, AI and ML can also be used to offer personalized discounts and promotions. By analyzing Customer Intelligence Solutions, retailers can identify which products a customer is most likely to be interested in purchasing and offer them exclusive discounts and promotions. This helps to increase customer loyalty and drive sales for the retailer.
Moreover, AI and ML can enable a seamless and efficient shopping experience for consumers. By using natural language processing and image recognition, retailers can offer accurate and relevant search results, making it easier for customers to find the products they are looking for. AI-powered chatbots and virtual shopping assistants can also provide instant support and guidance, helping customers with their purchases and answering any questions they may have.
As consumers increasingly expect personalized experiences, retailers that leverage AI and ML to offer dynamic and personalized shopping experiences are likely to see increased customer loyalty and sales. By using AI to offer personalized product recommendations, discounts, and promotions, and to provide a seamless and efficient shopping experience, retailers can create a competitive advantage in the crowded online marketplace.
This way, customers will keep getting suggestions of what to buy and therefore, saving their overall time to find products, improving their shopping experience and enhancing the comfort in their lifestyle.
2. By Enabling Next-level Data Comprehension
As mentioned in the previous section, creating customized product recommendations based on customer metrics like location, device, past purchase history, or browsing history requires quick calculations and accurate anticipation of what customers are interested in. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) is able to gather and analyze data more efficiently than any human could, and it can even take that analysis a step further to increase conversion rates in eCommerce stores.
Think of AI as a manager overseeing customer attendants, sales, and marketing activities all in one. It's able to analyze vast amounts of data, including customer behaviour and product inventory, and provide personalized recommendations that are tailored to each individual customer. By using machine learning algorithms, AI is also able to adapt to changing trends and customer preferences, ensuring that its recommendations remain relevant and up-to-date.
Moreover, AI can also automate various aspects of the sales and marketing process, such as chatbots and virtual shopping assistants. These tools can provide instant support and guidance to customers, answer their questions, and help them make informed purchasing decisions. This can save businesses time and resources, while also improving the Customer Relationship Management Solutions experience and increasing conversion rates.
3. By Enhancing Inventory Management
Artificial intelligence can analyze the market from the data of history and gather previous sales information. Plus, it also knows the current status of inventory stock. Therefore, it can know when the next inventory shortage is likely to happen based on the present and past sales data.
This way, artificial intelligence can allow eCommerce storefronts to handle their inner operations productively and accurately.
It can ensure that there are no sudden shortages that e-Commerce store owners have to face during the high-order inflow by giving custom alerts beforehand, allowing the owners to restock their goods to smoothly run overall operations.
Moreover, you can also plan warehousing and inventory management more precisely. The AI will keep the inventory data updated and precisely save information with the help of other assisting technologies like RFID sensors.
In the inventory where there are thousands of products are managed on a given day, database management can get challenging. Therefore, AI can enhance the complicated part of inventory data management so that people can focus more on increasing the overall business.
4. By Automating High-converting Marketing Campaigns
This is undoubtedly an essential benefit that eCommerce storefronts will experience thanks to artificial intelligence.
With AI, you can automate your digital marketing campaigns. For every major channel like search engine optimisation, social media, PPC, email marketing, chatbot and so on, you have artificial intelligence that can automate campaign ideation, generation, execution and optimisation.
Marketers just have to know how to use AI and plan the campaigns and AI will automate major tasks.
Speaking of advertising, you can run retargeting ads, develop ad creatives, write copy for ads using the GPT-3 powered tool, segment audience to run A/B tests of ad campaigns, and so on.
5. By Enabling Quality Customer Support
When it comes to AI in customer support, you can leverage chatbots to talk to your customers and automate sales.
AI has gone so advanced with chatbots, that it becomes hard to differentiate whether you’re talking to a program or an actual human being. As per a study, chatbots can handle around 68.9% of chats from start to finish.
Around communicated with chatbots to inquire about a business in 2020. And around 87% of buyers have a neutral to positive user experience with chatbots.
67% increase in Overall Sales
A chatbot can improve your store’s profit generation and engagement metrics.
The impact of AI on eCommerce cannot be overstated, with businesses seeing a 67% increase in overall sales through the implementation of AI-driven conversion strategies. Chatbots, in particular, have proven to be a powerful tool, with business messages created by chatbots seeing an impressive click-through rate (CTR).
These rates of CTR are difficult to achieve through traditional online marketing channels, such as SEO, social media, or email marketing. This is because chatbots are able to provide personalized support and recommendations to customers in real time, leading to increased engagement and conversion rates.
These chatbots allow you to interact with buyers when you are no longer online. It is like your full-time sales executive who can do the heavy lifting for you at all times.
6. By Changing the Pricing Depending on Demand and Supply
With AI, you can know what would be enough cost price of your products to make decent profit margins per sale.
Certainly, the AI would come up with the pricing based on the demand and supply of a particular product based on past data, but the feature that it generates will save you days and can do the job of an entire research team.
Summing up!
AI in eCommerce has the potential to give a complete overhaul to an online store! I hope the above points will help you to revamp your existing eCommerce business with AI integration to boost sales and enhance your business.
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