Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI & ML) are no longer just confined to scientific research and studies. They have crossed the academic boundaries and are currently transforming our day-to-day lives by making it easier than ever.
There have been a number of technological innovations around us in the past few years that are the outcomes of artificial intelligence and machine learning implementation. It has penetrated almost all the sectors and eCommerce is no longer an exception.
From personalized product recommendations to human-like chatbots, artificial intelligence is transforming the eCommerce landscape at a great pace. AI & ML have a lot of benefits to offer to eCommerce. The adoption rate of artificial intelligence in eCommerce is also increasing at a tremendous pace.
According to one report, 80% of retail employees expect that their company would adopt artificial intelligence by 2027. The same report suggests that 51% of eCommerce businesses have implemented artificial intelligence for enhancing sales, marketing, and customer service.
Artificial Intelligence & Extended Reality (AR & VR) in eCommerce
eCommerce allows business owners to run their online stores in a virtual world, which are available 24×7. It is a world that can be accessed from anywhere, anytime. Technological innovations along with the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning have opened doors to a new world of realities.
The novel innovations have allowed us to look beyond true reality through the eyes of technology. Augmented reality and virtual reality are the aftereffects of the technological progress that are currently powering the virtual world.
Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term that covers AR, VR, mixed reality, and other immersive experiences. Inability to physically touch or experience the product was a major drawback of eCommerce and XR is currently filling that gap through more immersive experiences.
Virtual reality can render virtual objects such as products with reality and can provide a more immersive, satisfying, and engaging product experience to the end-users. On the other hand augmented reality can simulate a virtual world in which the user can interact, providing the users with a more immersive and intuitive shopping experience than ever.
Such an immersive product experience can help customers to make more solid purchase decisions. According to a survey by Google, 66% of people prefer taking help from AR for online shopping.
The power of extended reality multiplies when combined with artificial intelligence. It can provide the end-users with a more immersive, and personalized shopping experience that with improved user engagement and conversions.
However, these technologies are currently in their growth phase and are yet to be fully implemented in the eCommerce market. The eCommerce leaders such as Amazon, Walmart have already started implementing AI and XR for improved customer experience.
Top Ways AI is Transforming eCommerce Landscape
Artificial intelligence is propelling a drastic change and transforming the eCommerce landscape. Metaverse, Virtual shopping hubs, AI-assisted shopping, are some of the expected outcomes of the usage of AI in eCommerce.
Artificial intelligence is currently benefiting the eCommerce businesses in a number of ways, improved user engagement, enhanced conversions, immersive product experience, are the few to name.
Artificial intelligence also helps in growing your eCommerce business. Some of the ways Artificial Intelligence is benefiting the eCommerce businesses are discussed in detail below.
Rise of Voice Search
Life has become easier with assistants such as Google and Siri. They have evolved enough through artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand human speech and recognize it.
The Internet has been harnessing the power of artificial intelligence in voice recognition for a long time now. The voice search by Google has changed the way people search online. Just say, “Hey Google, remind me about the meeting today at 4 PM” to your Google assistant, and a reminder is set, that’s it. It would not have been possible without artificial intelligence and machine learning.
According to Google, 20% of the searches are now being done through voice search on it. Artificial intelligence has also improved the ability of machines to recognize the voice over time. There have been drastic improvements in speech analysis, and contextual reasoning through artificial intelligence that has led us to more accurate voice recognition.
Artificial Intelligence has also boosted the use of voice search in online shopping platforms. It has totally changed how the customers search the products. It has allowed the customers to have a Speak-Browse-Purchase shopping experience online, reducing the online shopping friction.
Benefits of AI-Assisted Voice Search in eCommerce:
- Time Efficient: Voice search is time efficient from the customer’s point of view. It reduces the effort and time required to type and search for the product.
- Reduced Chances of Errors: Using voice search can significantly reduce the chances of errors associated with manual typing. It is smart enough to understand exactly what the customer wants.
- Improved Customer Experience: Voice search can improve the customer experience by providing them with a quick and effortless way to search for the products.
Intelligent Chatbots
Customer convenience is one of the most important parts of any eCommerce business that can impact the brand’s overall reputation and customer retention. Manual customer support is very old-fashioned with cutting-edge technologies. They are being replaced by intelligent AI-powered chatbots that can assist users with purchases and can solve common problems.
Chatbots are computer programs that are trained through artificial intelligence and machine learning to interact with customers and assist them. In eCommerce, chatbots can help businesses to improve customer engagement, support, and provide on-the-spot solutions to common problems faced by customers.
Leading eCommerce businesses are using chatbots to help users with general problems, assist users with product discovery, and more. Moreover, modern-day chatbots are intelligent enough to detect user aggression, disappointment, and can escalate them for human assistance.
Benefits of AI-Chatbots in eCommerce:
- 24×7 Support: Unlike human support, chatbots can provide uninterrupted support to the customers as they are not bound to any time limits.
- Improves Customer Support Efficiency: Chatbots can solve the general problems on the spot and can reduce the human efforts required to handle those queries.
- Cost-Effective: Chatbots can handle more customers at a time and reduce the human resources required to escalate the queries. It is cost-effective and efficient as compared to human support.
Personalized Shopping Recommendations
Artificial intelligence is slowly filling the gaps that were created during the offline to online shopping transition. One such gap is personalization. In offline shopping, the customers are treated more personally with a tailor-made shopping experience by the retailers. Today, artificial intelligence is doing its best in providing such a tailor-made shopping experience to the customers through personalized shopping.
Personalization is the key to optimized conversions and sales in eCommerce. Artificial intelligence can smartly provide a more personalized shopping experience to the customers by analyzing their shopping patterns and other data points. If you are running a Magento 2 store, you can also use Magento 2 Size Chart to help the customers choose the best fit for them and reduce the chances of order returns.
For example, if a customer purchases a product from an online store at regular intervals, artificial intelligence can show the product recommendation to the customer for that product at the most favorable period based on the previous buying patterns, and product lifecycle.
This can significantly improve the chances of conversions and boost the customer’s loyalty towards the online store.
Benefits of AI-Generated Product Recommendation in eCommerce:
- Improves User Experience: Customers may find it interesting when they are recommended the product they are looking for. This can improve the user experience of the online store.
- Boosts Conversions: Providing a personalized customer experience can improve the conversion rate.
- Enhances Customer Retention: A personalized customer experience can add to the customer experience and can improve the customer lifetime value.
AI-Generated Product Descriptions
Product descriptions play an important role in converting visitors into customers. A good product description can help the end-user understand the product and compel them to buy them. Artificial intelligence has also started covering the creative part of writing.
AI tools can help eCommerce businesses to create a product description that can help brands to speak up and engage users. There are tools that can auto generate product descriptions using machine learning and complex algorithms, so that the eCommerce store owners no longer spend a long time writing them manually.
Benefits of AI-Generated Product Descriptions in eCommerce:
- Save Time: Writing a product description can be a tedious task. Using artificial intelligence to do that can save time and resources.
- Cost-Effective: Artificial intelligence can help to create better content copies at cheaper rates as compared to human writers.
- Reduce Errors: Manual product descriptions can sometimes contain grammatical mistakes that are almost unavoidable. AI-generated content is more likely to follow strict grammar rules.
Image Recognition & Visual Search
Sometimes, the customer may want to search for some products online but might have difficulty finding them. This is the common scenario for most shoppers. This is where the ‘Search by Image’ or ‘Reverse Image Search’ functionality can help.
In visual search, complex algorithms and artificial intelligence can help identify the products that the customer is searching for online and provide similar results. Moreover, it can also help eCommerce businesses to recognize the product images and tag them.
Leading eCommerce players such as Amazon are already providing such functionality on their online stores that allows the customers to find the products using pictures.
Benefits of Visual Search in eCommerce:
- Effective Product Discovery: Allowing the customers to find the products using images can improve their product discovery experience.
- Improved Use Experience: Implementing a visual search in your store can reduce the efforts required by the customers to find the right product and help improve the customer experience.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is no longer just limited to laboratories and experiments. It can greatly reduce human efforts and make lives much easier through proper implementation. It has been drastically changing the eCommerce landscape with more innovative and robust solutions.
It is being adopted by the eCommerce businesses at a great pace. The eCommerce market is currently going through an AI revolution. Businesses pace up with the AI market trends to survive in the highly competitive market.
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Author Bio: Jay Jangid has 2 years of experience in the news media industry with journalistic touch and knowledge of how to create and recreate information into news. Now serving ‘Top Ten Corner’ and ‘Netflix Trends‘ to serve people with right and original content.
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