Artificial Intelligence In Ecommerce

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning. You must have heard these words nowadays in news, blogs, tech conferences! But,

• What exactly is Artificial Intelligence?
• What exactly is Machine Learning?
• How will those terms help improve your business?

Well, this blog will answer all of those questions! You just need to stick around till the end of this blog, and you will know the recipe for the secret sauce to improving the business with Artificial Intelligence.

It has completely changed the eCommerce industry. Things are better when AI is used in eCommerce, and that is beneficial for both the customers and the merchants. But, first things first, we will start from the introduction of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence is nothing but a system that mimics human intelligence, and surprisingly, this AI thing is heavily capable of mimicking human intelligence. So, the days are not far when you can see the machines smarter than humans.

We have already seen Sofia robot having her own intelligence and thoughts. The artificial intelligence is evolving day-by-day and it is likely to take over human intelligence someday.

And the topic Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce is not a surprising thing. Almost all major eCommerce platforms use Artificial Intelligence.

Apart from eCommerce, the retail industry has also taken advantage of Artificial Intelligence and implemented it in their market to make AI retail more powerful. Let’s take some examples of Artificial Intelligence used in our daily lives.

• Gmail smart replies
• Google predictive search
• Chatbots
• Google Assistant / Siri / Alexa
• Product recommendations on eCommerce
• Music recommendations

So, these were some of the common examples of Artificial Intelligence we use every day! Since Artificial Intelligence came in the market, all the industries got better with the use of AI.

eCommerce industry also started getting better sales using AI. AI is used in recommending relevant products to the users and that’s how the users started purchasing relevant products and that helped the eCommerce get more sales.

The same way, online music streaming service providers get more users. AI is used in recommending the users relevant music they are hearing. So, this way, the user will get to explore similar music and get a good user experience.

Overall, artificial intelligence in ecommerce has brought a great revolution. Let’s see how much artificial intelligence has affected the eCommerce and retail market.

Since the entry of Artificial Intelligence, the eCommerce industry has made significant growth and over 72% of business leaders believe that AI will provide more benefits for their business in the future.

And, in fact, Artificial Intelligence will benefit the ecommerce industry more and more in the future as well.

Here are some advantages you can get by implementing Artificial Intelligence to your eCommerce store.

By implementing AI in your eCommerce store, you can get the benefits of a stronger search algorithm. AI can guess what are you looking for.

If you frequently searched for shoes and sneakers, then again if you go to the search bar and type just s-n, then AI present in your ecommerce will predict that you are looking for sneakers. So, this is how the user will quickly find whatever he/she is searching for and the user experience will also be improved.

Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce also helps to get product recommendations. A stronger Artificial Intelligence will support a stronger product recommendation algorithm.

Suppose you are purchasing a laptop from any website, then relevant cooling pad, keyboard, etc will appear in your recommended products’ list. Thanks AI.

Artificial Intelligence will automatically detect the relevant products of the product you just bought. So, don’t get surprised if you have recently purchased a smartphone and you are getting phone covers in your recommended products’ list.

For example, if a person buys a dress, then she will get the matching items or accessories to that particular dress in her recommendation list. A person is trying to buy a couple of dresses, then she is getting some products recommended by Artificial Intelligence present in that eCommerce website.

With this technique, you can increase your sales and grow more business revenue. You can see the screenshot below.

Inventory management is a tedious task when it has to be done manually. You gotta keep checking the sales and the stock and keep updating the inventory. But, artificial intelligence is designed to do the most tedious tasks.

With its predictive data science, it can predict the upcoming sales and keep the stock updated with its predictive algorithm. So, you don’t need to keep checking on inventory every day.

Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce will do everything for you while you are making plans to expand your eCommerce store reach. So, you just have to plan the strategy while AI is taking care of your eCommerce store.

Before Artificial Intelligence came in the market, the sales strategy was very limited. It depended on cold-calling, email marketing, etc.

But, with the entry of Artificial intelligence in eCommerce, sales strategy also improved, and the sellers can now plan strategies that actually work.

AI lets you target the audience, based on audience gender, location, interests, etc. So, you don’t need to spend advertising money on the irrelevant audience. But, your advertising budget will be only used by targeting the relevant audience.

If you are selling men’s products, then your advertising budget won’t be used in showing the ad to female users and exhaust your advertising budget improperly.

“Communication is the key!” The key to more sales is communication. Communication with customers. You need to engage with customers to know about their needs and thoughts.

By helping them with answering their questions related to your products, you can win their trust. A trusting customer always makes a purchase. But, how AI will help in communicating with the customers? Well, the answer is Chatbots!

Developing a good chatbot will help you retain the visitor and convert that visitor into your customer. You can develop a smart and intelligent chatbot which can totally understand your customers and provides them with the right assistance.

Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing have helped understanding customers in a better way. If a customer drops a message asking about the shipping time, then the chatbot should be able to answer that question correctly and provide the customer with a great experience.

Chatbot development will not only impress the customers but only it will save time and cost for customer service employee and automate the system.

Now let’s take an example. If you have an already built eCommerce website/app, then you will definitely hire customer care executives who handle all the customer queries.

But, developing a chatbot will reduce the cost of hiring customer care executives and make your business process super-smooth.

When you develop a chatbot, your ROI will be higher and it is only a one-time investment and you just have to maintain that chatbot at a regular frequency.

Selling just product is not enough in eCommerce or any market. You have to provide after-sales service as well. If a customer has any questions on the delivered items or wants to return it or wants any type of after-sales service from you, then again, Artificial Intelligence can handle it very well.

Artificial Intelligence automatically detects product delivery and send customer feedback forms, ask the customer to rate the product and their service or send the survey form.

So, this is how Artificial Intelligence can provide a better after-sales service and provide a better experience to the customers and make them review your business better.

So, this talk was all about Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce. But, do you know that AI has helped not only in eCommerce but the retail market as well? Do you know how? Here is the answer.

The retail market is also getting benefits from Artificial Intelligence and revolutionizing the retail market. The retail market is now capable of more things as compared to earlier.

Large supermarkets are automating the system with the use of AI robots. Recently opened Amazon Go Store is the best example of Artificial Intelligence in the retail market.

The stores are getting cashier-less and more organized with robots. Walmart is also testing its shelf organizing robots in some of its stores. So, the retail market is definitely going to be more efficient with the use of artificial intelligence in retail.

Now, let’s see how artificial intelligence in retail is proved to be a blessing. Some of the retail stores have developed excellent AI system which is capable of making things automated way more than we can think.

The worldwide famous company Amazon is well-known for its large retail supply chain and its constant improvement through implementing the latest technologies and features in their online store.

But, Amazon has recently launched the Amazon Go Store, which says “No queue, No checkout”! Yes, the Amazon Go Store has neither queues nor checkout options. It is just a grab-and-go store in which you have to enter the store with your Amazon account, pick the items you want and just walk out of the store.

Bills will be added to your Amazon account and you can pay it later at your convenience. This store is a great savior when you are running out of time and do not have time to stand in the queue and waste your precious time.

One of the largest retail market of the world Walmart is also testing artificial intelligence to automate their shelf scanning and for better inventory management as we said earlier in this blog.

These robots will be capable of scanning the missing items, remind the manager to restock the missing items and price tags that need to be changed. So, these AI enabled robots will be capable of handling many tasks on their own and prove to be a hard-working employee for the store.

One of the largest and famous fashion retailer Zara is also trying its hands on Artificial Intelligence and make their retail stores AI-enabled. The store has developed a system that assists the customers when they come to pick up their order at the Zara store.

When the customer comes to pick up the order, he/she enters the pickup code and the robot starts searching his/her order items in the warehouse and delivers it via a dropbox.

One of the largest ready-made outfit brands, American Eagle is also enabling Artificial Intelligence in their stores.

American Eagle has developed a system in which a customer just needs to scan an item from the store and they can check what’ in stock. The employees will be notified about any outfit the customers wants and the employee will deliver that item right into the dressing room.

Moreover, the system will recommend products based on what the customer has tried. So, this is how American Eagle is increasing their business through Artificial Intelligence and improve their customer experience.

Recommended Reading : IoT A Big Deal in Retail Industry

So, overall artificial intelligence in retail has proved to be a boon and a key to increase retail sales and deliver a great user experience.

According to a survey conducted in August 2018 by Capgemini, AI could save $340 billion annually by the year 2023. They also estimate that 80% of retail would be from enabling AI in their retail. So, to conclude this, we can say that by enabling AI in retail or ecommerce, we can get great output and increase the business revenue manifolds. And according to an article on Forbes, 53% of marketers are willing to adapt AI in their business in the next couple of years.

So, we don’t have any option other than embracing the AI with all of our hearts and welcome it from this very moment and enable our businesses with AI.

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