Ecommerce is a booming industry with total sales amounting to 5.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. This number is forecasted to reach about 8.1 trillion dollars by 2026. Besides eCommerce giants like Amazon and Alibaba, many individual websites and shopping apps contributed to this growth.
But as eCommerce grows and evolves, so do the technologies that power it—and one area that has come into focus recently is artificial intelligence (AI). From adding better customer services to offering innovative solutions to operations, the benefits of artificial intelligence as a tool in ecommerce are great, enhancing the experience for both customers and companies.
According to Market.us, the Global Artificial Intelligence Market was valued to be worth USD 129.28 billion in 2022. From 2023 to 2032, it is estimated to reach USD 2967.51 billion growing at a CAGR of 36.8%.
In this article, we'll explore how AI can help you improve your business with these six techniques.
1. Product tagging using image classification
Image classification helps you label, group, and classify large volumes of data—and by large, we mean, Zettabytes of data businesses generate daily. AI classifies images based on the content, themes, or colors, depending on what you program your AI to do.
Different image classification applications are employed in various industries, and eCommerce uses the technology to automate the product image tagging process.
Traditionally, this process was done manually, where products are categorized based on size, brand, color, fabric, sale, and other factors. These tags make it easy to search for a product on an eCommerce site, enabling shoppers to filter their preferences and pick just the right product they are looking for.
Classifying and tagging hundreds or thousands of products manually is time-consuming, especially for a brand with a huge catalog of products. This is where AI-powered image classification comes in handy, fast-tracking the process.
Automatic product tagging in eCommerce
Ecommerce companies use automatic tagging to minimize the need for human intervention and automate the process of tagging products based on specific criteria to improve the shopping experience. AI algorithms recognize pictures and analyze label images based on their tag.
For example, an AI algorithm will tag a blue blazer into “blue”, “full-sleeves”, “velvet”, “slim-fit”, “34/ L”, “office-wear”, “women's blazer,” and many other possible categories. So, whenever a shopper looks up these terms on an eCommerce site, they’ll see the blue blazer listed in the result.
AI adapts to this tagging mechanism by analyzing multiple previously tagged products on other sites with similar products and learning along the way.
Provided by Straight North2. Live support via chatbots
Chatbots help retailers automate their customer service and sales support. They are on the verge of becoming the primary customer support channel in the coming five years.
They are capable of answering questions, providing answers mimicking a customer support rep, and even solving problems, like:
- What is your return policy?
- How do I cancel my order?
- When will my order ship?
Answering FAQs
The most common use case for chatbots is answering FAQs. You can create an AI-powered bot that will respond directly on your website or chat platform with answers specific to your brand (e.g., “What does ‘free shipping' mean?”). Observe how H&M has done for offering customer support on their website.
This also allows you to collect valuable data about what kinds of questions users are asking so that you can improve upon them in future updates or marketing campaigns.
Dedicated customer support channels
In addition to answering FAQs, some companies also create dedicated customer service channels where customers can send general inquiries via text message or email — all with one click.
For example, Amazon has its dedicated email address [email protected], which receives thousands of emails daily.
Google, too, offers similar services via Gmail’s Hangouts feature, and Apple provides customer support via the iMessage app.
3. Personalize the customer experience
The more you learn about each customer's preferences, interests, needs, and expectations for specific products on your website, the easier it becomes for you to offer them personalized experiences across multiple channels. AI helps in achieving that, especially when you take advantage of AI-powered journey orchestration tools.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective way to personalize your emails with relevant content based on the customer’s past behavior in your store. This is where AI helps you track their behavior and activities on your website and collect relevant data to help you convert them. For example, if you're looking to create personalized images for your email campaigns, you can use AI images generated using Picsart's Ai picture generator feature.
Say a visitor has spent some time browsing a specific product on your site and even added the product to the cart but didn’t end up purchasing it. You can follow up with the visitor via emails, helping them make up their mind by showing other variations of the product or offering a limited-period discount offer.
Notice how the above brand has promoted an ongoing sale by showing the product a customer has been eyeing, nudging them to take advantage of the sale.
Emailing customers who have visited your store before will ensure that they receive information about upcoming sales or promotions related to the products they recently viewed—and this kind of targeted communication keeps them coming back.
Personalized homepage
Ever noticed while shopping on Amazon that every time you open the app, you’re shown products similar to what you browsed last time? You’re mainly shown deals, offers, and a variety of products based on your search history and website activity.
That’s the kind of shopping experience you can offer your customers using AI-powered behavior analysis tools.
4. Make the checkout process seamless and secure
Reduce friction in the checkout process
Cart abandonment is an eCommerce shop owner’s worst nightmare, considering the average cart abandonment rate is 69.9%. You need to consider all the reasons a shopper might not be willing to take the final step after sticking with you till this step.
- Is your shipping fee too high?
- Does your payment page load slowly?
- Is the process too confusing?
This is how you can use AI to offer a seamless checkout experience:
- Make sure the customer has easy access to return items within a certain number of days at no additional cost. All this process must be automated and easily done via a website, chatbot, or email.
- Offer return facility via email or text message, so customers don't even have to think about how they want their packages handled once they've received them.
- Save them from the trouble of filling up their information with every purchase by enabling the auto-complete feature.
- Enable automatic tax or convenience fee calculation at the beginning of the checkout process to avoid any last minutes surprises.
Strengthen the security
When it comes to eCommerce, security is one of the most important aspects customers care about. After all, how will they feel comfortable giving you their credit card information if they can't trust you to keep their information safe and secure?
Ensure that all payments are processed securely through a secure payment gateway such as Stripe or PayPal Express Checkout. This way, you can offer better protection against fraud than traditional methods like percentage-based processing fees.
5. Automate redundant tasks
Identify the redundant tasks in your eCommerce operations and use AI to develop algorithms to automate them. These algorithms perform a given task on their own and repeat them on command.
For example, suppose you want your website's shipping calculator to automatically calculate shipping costs for all orders placed through your website. In that case, you'll need a machine-learning algorithm that will do this for each customer who makes an order on your site.
Smart logistics
AI has the power to optimize your inventory management system by gathering real-time information from sensors and RFID tags. This information is used to increase production efficiency and streamline the whole process.
6. Voice-enabled shopping
The rise of smart speakers has enabled shoppers to use the voice search feature to shop. Reason—they find it more convenient to narrate their query instead of actually opening a browser and typing it in.
Voice search uses voice recognition AI technology to execute voice commands received from any voice-enabled device. Whether your shoppers are driving, walking, or cooking, they can simply shop using their voices without moving a bit.
Make sure your website is voice SEO friendly and targets query-based keywords like “shoes under $200 online”.
Optimize your site for repeat orders
One of the most common applications of voice shopping is repeat orders. Customers know what they want to buy—you can make their experience faster and more seamless by allowing them to re-purchase an item. Set up reminders to re-purchase a product a customer uses a lot and make it convenient for them.
Leverage AI to boost your eCommerce business
Update – We can now use AI to generate images of almost any nature. These are very real like images created by the AI based of a series of instructions or a description that we provide it to create from. There has been some research around this image generation by AI and has found some bias's in what the AI takes as cues to produce the images, so you need to be mindful of this potential bias if you're considering using AI to generate images for your business.
As you can see, there are many benefits of artificial intelligence in ecommerce, and a lot of new innovations are yet to be uncovered.
However, the important thing is to keep experimenting with new trends and stay up to day with the ever-evolving eCommerce landscape. This way, you’ll always be well caught up about your customer preferences and have ample data to pivot to a new direction to level up your business.
Author’s Bio
This article was kindly provided by Deepali, who is an engineer-turned-freelance writer for B2B SaaS, writing actionable long-form content for marketing, Cybersecurity, and HR-Tech companies. When she's not writing, she's engrossed in a cozy murder mystery novel with a cup of hot chocolate!
