With e-commerce being one of the most competitive industries, there is no wonder Artificial Intelligence is very welcomed in assisting online retailers to improve their customer experience and increase commercial value.
E-commerce is one of the main areas of applying artificial intelligence in business. The success in online businesses is defined by how well merchants make shopping convenient, fast, and effective. For this reason, the hottest AI innovations are focused on improving search and product recommendations.
Here are just a couple of areas that artificial intelligence will produce a huge difference in the year to come!
More accurate and flexible searches
Customers have become intolerant of irrelevant content. And all studies back this up! About 73% of shoppers expect retailers to improve the accuracy of search suggestions. And this is exactly the point for AI to come onstage.
Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence can make semantic search engines more precise. The application of machine learning allows recognizing typos, synonyms, and product relations.
Also, artificial intelligence offers more search options based on voice and image recognition. Voice search is gaining popularity for its convenience. According to Google, 20% of searches in 2016 involved voice recognition. And specialists predict that this figure will reach 50% by 2020.
Smarter assistants and chatbots
The main drawback of online stores is the lack of human assistants. Though there are chatbots coded to respond in a particular way, they can hardly replace people who can listen, understand, and talk. AI changes the customer experience game as it allows shoppers to communicate with a web store via text, voice, and pictures and enjoy human-like responses.
Personal assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana are the future of online apparel shops. As they can not only help a customer find the item they need but also help them understand what exactly they need to look great.
Next level of upsell and cross-sell recommendations
Machine learning makes cross-selling and upselling more relevant to customers and thus more effective. Recommendation engines powered by AI can analyze customer data and behavior and anticipate their needs with smart recommendations.
In fact, the algorithms are getting sophisticated enough to understand how non-trivial factors, like changes in preferences with age, can influence buying behavior. Algorithms can learn based on previous customer reactions in particular circumstances, determine the most effective tactic and apply it in a similar situation.
Apart from influencing customer experience directly, AI transforms the backend part of e-commerce, which is marketing and warehouse logistics.
Insights for better marketing and planning
Smart predictions of sales help merchants manage logistics costs better and eventually let them strike the balance between supply and demand.
Normally, marketers use their wit to identify segmentation parameters such as gender or age. AI can distinguish customer segments leveraging more subtle criteria, like particular product preferences or shopping behavior.
Another AI benefit for eCommerce marketing is the analysis of reviews. Customer feedback is the key to identifying your weak points and improving service. On time reaction to negative and positive reviews helps a company to increase customer loyalty and prevent negative publicity if something goes wrong. Machine learning algorithms can analyze the content of reviews and mine valuable data from page descriptions and reviews.