Impact Of Artificial Intelligence In The Ecommerce Industry

Impact of artificial intelligence in the ecommerce industry

Artificial intelligence has been a topic of discussion for a few years now. Initially, the application of AI was quite limited, but nowadays, the latest technologies have allowed many sectors to incorporate the benefits of AI with their module. And the ecommerce industry is one of those sectors.

But, now the major question everyone has is, “how is it possible to use Artificial intelligence in the e-commerce industry?”

In this article, we will share a few insights that will let you know how practical and powerful AI can be in the world of shopping.

The relation between e-commerce and AI

Well, the use of AI in ecommerce is not a recent phenomenon. Many e-commerce and retail websites have been benefitting from it for years now. In fact, the new generation of AI is building a potent niche that is hard to resist. Also, as per Omdia’s survey, AI software revenues will reach $100 million globally by 2025.

And with such impressive numbers, it won’t be a surprise to hear that AI will be conquering the retail and e-commerce world too.

Plus, when it comes to e-commerce business, it is a profit-driven sector where sales happen every minute, no matter what day or time it is. And that means the need to be active for the customers 24/7 is essential. Here is where AI comes in. It helps the companies gather real-time information while achieving the goals.

And trust us, AI can make everything flawless, let’s take a look at the same in the next part.

How can AI help the e-commerce market place?

1. Optimize warehouse operations:

   E-commerce websites like Amazon have over 175 fulfilment hubs worldwide. And almost every hub receives billions of orders that are daily picked, packed and shipped to the customers.

   To make the process easier in the facilities, Amazon uses thousands of flat, wheeled robots to move and arrange the packages. These robots ensure that the packages that go together are placed closer for easy packing. Plus, machine learning is also utilized to calculate how long it takes for an order to move from one place to another.

2. Offer personalized recommendations to the shoppers: Artificial Intelligence in e-commerce can be used efficiently and intelligently to scan from petabytes of data to foresee customer behaviour. This way, it becomes easy to offer helpful and relevant recommendations to each customer.

   And this type of intelligence is highly appreciated when offering personalized shopping experience to the user.

   For example, Starbuck’s My Starbucks Barista uses AI to take customer orders through voice command or messaging. Besides, the algorithm supports various inputs like customer preference, account information, contextual details, purchase history and even third-party data. This way, the coffee brand is able to produce and deliver more personalized recommendations and messages to the users.

   By offering recommendation, the e-commerce retailers can assist the customers in finding the best solution.

3. Identify exceptional target prospects:

   Artificial Intelligence manages to tap into the challenges faced by the businesses in a timely manner, such as lead generation.

   For instance, Getty Images, the stock image store, takes help from predictive marketing businesses to manage the marketing, sales and CRM systems. This way, they were able to generate significant new leads by inspecting the data that displays which firm’s website features images from Getty’s competitors.

   With this practical sales intelligence resource in place, Getty is able to determine high-quality prospects, thus, offering their sales team a competitive benefit to win new clients.

   Without AI and machine learning, Getty’s system would have failed to begin with.

4. Create an efficient sales process:

   Well, almost every business goes through the cold-calling phase. But, you must know that the customers are no longer interested in being pestered on calls. So, now if you want a custom problem-solving solution and build a potent sales message that reaches the customers at the right time on the right platform, then start by integrating your CRM with AI.

   For instance, a large e-commerce retailer like The North Face is a perfect AI in ecommerce examples who are using AI to comprehend the customers better. By incorporating IBM’s AI Watson, they have opened doors to various sales possibilities. They use voice input AI technology to ask the customers all relevant questions; then the IBM software scans through thousands of products to locate a perfect match on the basis of the real-time inputs.

   Wersel’s proprietary product ‘Wersel DiscoverX’ helps brand owners and marketers collect disparate information from various structured and unstructured sources. This helps it to power upIntelligent search options to auto-complete, find same/similar or rank by relevance.

5. Offer a personal touch with Chatbot:

   When it comes to online sales, there are various touch points that need to be influenced to generate a purchase, one of which is capturing attention.  Well, besides offering an attractive space to make the purchase, the e-commerce websites need to create a conjunction of vocal, predictive, written and visual capabilities. And since consumers are rapidly evolving, Chatbot can drive the conversation to various possibilities.

   Besides, offering the consumers a stimulated human-like conversation, the bot can manage various other responsibilities of operations and marketing too. In fact, Chatbot can prove to be an effective yet cost-efficient way of offering customer services as it becomes the most convenient means for visitors to get answers.

6. Fill the gap between personalization and privacy:

   When it comes to personalization, many consumers get concerned about their privacy too. And in recent years, we have seen many instances where people have started questioning the way Google search works and how they see recommendations of the searched things on every social media platforms.

   But thankfully, many brands are putting best efforts into taking transparency, security and honesty to a new level. By using AI, you can sync the information rather than scaring the customers away. AI can, in fact, provide outstanding experiences that will make the users share the precious details willingly, thus filling the gap between personalization and privacy.

Over to you

It is evident from the blog that the assistance offered by AI in ecommerce is noteworthy. In fact, AI can have enormous and beneficial impacts on the e-commerce industry that will arguably improve the customer experience, resulting in better ROIs in the coming future.