Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Altering eCommerce For Better – Learn How

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hot selling topics of this century. Although AI has been around since the 80s, it has found exciting applications in this decade only. AI has grown on such a magnanimous scale that analysts hold the view that it will touch the $120 billion mark by 2025. AI has crawled into various sectors, like automation, marketing, analyzing, and e-commerce. The e-commerce sector has undergone a complete transformation by incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has even influenced custom eCommerce development.

Consumers often get confused with the bewildering amount of products and brands available on the internet and thus cannot find the product matching their exact preferences. AI solves this problem by gathering user data, analyzing the consumers’ taste, and presenting the options accordingly. This also creates an environment where only the brands delivering quality products and services can sustain and thrive to grow. On the other hand, consumers get better products for their money. AI is altering the e-commerce sector in the following ways:

Personalized Recommendations

The famous pay per view service provider Netflix made a breakthrough in its business when it rolled out the feature of personalized recommendations. It started recommending movies and TV shows to its users based on the users’ previous choices. The IT giant Amazon then followed this model and reported a 28% growth in its user base. Netflix also got the recommendations right 80% of the time.

These companies were able to succeed in their ventures because the consumer feels targeted when brands use traditional marketing techniques. Instead, brands are now using AI algorithms to study consumer behavior and track patterns in it. They then suggest products based on this pattern, and the chances of customers buying a product from these suggestions are quite high.

The personalized recommendations help businesses, as well. There are several AI search engines which provide data reflecting the various touchdowns of user data. The businesses then use this data to provide a seamless user experience. eCommerce businesses incorporating AI have reportedly shown a 60% growth in their sales.

Chatbots

Another innovative application of AI in the e-commerce sector is chatbots. Imagine yourself walking into a store and rummaging through each section to find what you need. It would be tedious work, whereas it would be a lot easier if a store guide helps you pick up what you need. A chatbot is your online store guide. With the evolution of AI, chatbots have also become much more advanced. In fact, industry experts claim that by 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be handled by chatbots only.

Chatbots are wildly successful among the customers as they provide a personalized experience. In fact, 64% of people claim that they have a hassle free and personalized experience with the chatbots. The business also finds chatbots quite cost effective. Statistically speaking, the companies who use chatbots have a 43% higher customer retention rate than the companies who do not.

Stronger Website

Ecommerce websites need a good digital marketing strategy to stay ahead of their competitors. The implementation of AI can achieve this. A good digital marketing strategy usually contains trending hashtags and trending topics. Developers can use AI to build custom eCommerce algorithms that traverse through the trending topics and hashtags. The results from the traversing then can be incorporated into designing and building SEO friendly websites.

In a survey, 40% of consumers claimed that they switched alternate websites because the initial website was slow. Another way in which AI can help in building better websites is by making websites faster. This can be done by training the AI models to detect the touchdowns of a website where the underlying code can be optimized, thus resulting in faster websites. This is known as code crunching.

Marketing Assistance

AI can be a useful tool for e-commerce business. With the use of AI algorithms, e-commerce sites can gain insights into user data and thus build better marketing strategies for their targeted audience. According to Gartner's leading global and research firm, 40% of sales processes will integrate AI in their workflow by 2020.

This surge is because AI helps you to market your product or service to a much refined targeted audience. The goal is to sell the right thing to the right audience at the right time. As the targeted audience is refined, the chances of selling the product or service also increase, thus leading to a better CRO. This is most commonly used in facebook audience targeting. Also, as you know your customer, it will help you to design your products and services according to their needs. AI also helps to predict marketing trends according to the current market data.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence is still in its early evolving phase. Each day new breakthroughs are being made in the field of AI. Developers around the world are finding new and exciting ways to implement AI in various sectors of our day to day lives. The eCommerce section has also experienced a colossal impact on the integration of AI. This is the right time to get accustomed to these revolutionary tactics that have the potential to yield tenfold success results. We have already witnessed the success of giants like Amazon and Flipkart. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

With each passing day, AI is becoming a necessary tool in the e-commerce industry, which benefits both the buyer and the seller. So, utilize this tool to get the very best out of it. You can implement AI in your e-commerce business in the following ways.

• Using AI tools develop a custom eCommerce environment that is personalized for customers.
• Deploy chatbots on your website as well as on your company Facebook page
• Integrate AI in your sales and marketing process.
• Engage in customer retargeting. Over 40% of businesses have increased their sales by potential retargeting customers. Maybe the second time's the charm.

Also, another advantage of AI is its uniformity. Whether it is big business, medium sized business or a small scale business, AI tools, when used as per your business, are guaranteed to yield results. The only drawback of AI is that it is still in its early phases and not fully developed, but for some, this may appear as an opportunity. They can reap the early-bird benefits.

Click here to hop on this bandwagon of success.