How is AI Transforming E-commerce?

AI Solutions for E-commerce: An Overview

According to Oracle’s research, almost 80% percent of brands had already implemented or planned to implement artificial intelligence by 2020. With online shopping seeing a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was only natural for more companies to turn to AI solutions. Let’s take a look at examples of the use of AI in e-commerce to see how it is revolutionizing not only business automation but customer experience as well.

Thanks to its robust data analysis, AI has an excellent overview of consumer behavior. AI can target the campaigns more effectively to respond to the buyer’s needs, filter out fake reviews, and offer smart search as well as image and voice search. It can also provide the customer with personalized recommendations and after-sale support. AI chatbots are already widely in use and are only getting better at assisting customers with online shopping.

There are more aspects of e-commerce that AI has found its application in, such as privacy and cybersecurity, as well as business logistics. Artificial intelligence excels at inventory management –  ensuring that the products in demand don’t go out of stock – as well as at warehouse automation. It can monitor the business’s entire supply chain, and offer sales and demand forecasting.

AI-powered E-commerce Chatbots

One of the biggest and most recognized uses of AI in e-commerce are definitely chatbots. Their main advantage? They are available 24/7. Unlike earlier versions of bots, AI chatbots can have human-like conversations, understand queries and give intelligent replies, and recognize and address users’ needs. Thanks to their learning ability and basis in deep learning and natural language processing, AI bots get better the more they are in use, with algorithms getting more accurate at predicting interactions. Having learned from actual conversations, AI chatbots are able to achieve a natural conversational tone. They are also able to predict customers’ needs and are well equipped to assist in the shopping process.

Top Ways AI Can Benefit E-commerce Businesses 

It’s no wonder that AI is seeing such a rapid rise in e-commerce, considering its benefits, and it all starts with reaching the right customers. Based on extensive data on customer behavior, AI provides well-targeted advertising, tailored precisely to the customer’s needs, which increases customer retention. It can provide tailor-made discounts and offers, and follow up on customers after their purchase or abandoned shopping sessions in order to get valuable feedback on the service. AI can help customers every step of the way, ultimately making the sales process very efficient. 

In general, one of the main benefits of AI in e-commerce is simply that it allows for efficient business automation – from writing product descriptions and designing marketing strategies all the way to managing your warehouse. It helps make intelligent business decisions, thus simplifying the business process, increasing productivity, and reducing costs. 

AI Personalization

On an intuitive level, it might seem unexpected for online shopping to provide a more personalized experience than in-person shopping, but thanks to AI’s insights on individual customer data, e-commerce is easily taking the lead here. Based on the data on the customer’s browsing habits and their previous searches and purchases, AI can offer personalized search results and make spot-on recommendations better than human staff can. 

AI helps e-commerce businesses to better engage with their customers by segmenting their audience, targeting potential customers, and retargeting the returning ones. This way, retailers can cater to each customer individually instead of using a generalized approach based on collective behavior data. Thanks to AI, a business can develop a strong relationship with its customers.

Predictive Analytics

Do you know what AI loves to do – or what we love to do with it? Make predictions! Why crunch all that data and analyze the existing patterns if you’re not going to try and figure out what the future trends might be?

In predictive analytics, AI looks at various variables, such as the company’s sales history and its competitive position in the market, trends in customer searches and sales, changes in potential and existing customer demographics, socio-economic factors, and more. For predictions on short-term sales, it can even process real-time data.

This way, businesses can anticipate the needs of their customers, with AI offering them just the right product recommendations.

With sales forecasting, it is easier to set both short-term and long-term sales goals. This is important when allocating company resources and managing the stock. By helping better organize and optimize supply chains, AI helps businesses save money and increase their revenue.

Emerging Trends and Possibilities

While AI is already leading new trends in e-commerce, there is always room for growth. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field where e-commerce meets smart appliances and virtual assistants. This is where the use of AI is perhaps most visible and offers a huge potential for integration with e-commerce. In the end, it’s all about convenience, and AI doesn’t only benefit businesses – it benefits customers, too.

Supply Chain Optimization  

One of the key advantages of AI is that it can process data in real time. This comes in handy especially when it comes to optimizing supply chain and inventory management, as AI can help automate both of those tasks, ensuring that the e-commerce business avoids piling idle stock while being able to adequately respond to the market demand. As any e-commerce business can tell you, reliable supply management is essential to keeping your customers from fleeing to competitors’ websites.

Simply put, thanks to AI, the business can know exactly what items need to be ordered, and when the orders need to be placed. It can analyze sales trends, predict upward or downward spikes in product demand, and anticipate possible issues with supply – from vendor issues to weather forecasts that can cause delays in shipment.

With AI, you get smart logistics: automated and more efficient inventory management that improves operational performance, ultimately saving your business both time and money.