Artificial Intelligence has revolutionised the way we live our lives, and it has especially changed the way we shop. AI and machine-based-learning has the ability to aggregate big data at high speed (something that humans cannot possibly achieve) which has afforded eCommerce retailers the tools needed to improve their business strategies, compete in a saturated digital market and increase their profit margins.
Keep reading to find out just 5 ways Artificial Intelligence has evolved in the online marketplace and how it greatly benefits eCommerce retailers.
Pricing Intelligence
Retail intelligence tools are making waves in the digital retail space. With these advanced AI-powered tools, online retailers can acquire valuable data about their competitors, especially with regards to how they are pricing their products.
Understanding and keeping up-to-date with competitors’ pricing is essential because price is one of the biggest deciding factors for consumers when shopping online. If your competitors are selling the same products as you but for cheaper, you will likely lose your business to them.
Many online retail giants like Amazon and ASOS have a catalogue of thousands of products, and it’s therefore impossible to monitor their price fluctuations manually. However, by leveraging AI-powered automated pricing intelligence tools that can analyse large amounts of data and provide real-time insights on product pricing, brands can ensure that they constantly altering their own pricing strategy to ensure that they are always remaining competitive.
Personalised shopping experience
New AI technologies mean that the online consumer shopping experience is becoming more and more personalised, and this can greatly benefit retailers. With insights on consumer habits and behaviours brands can better target their customers and show them advertisements on things they have previously expressed interest in.
For example, AI engines can monitor different devices and channels to identify what a consumer is interested in, and then present them with personalised notifications and pop-up ads about real-time sales and offers. This creates a more personalised and seamless shopping experience across multiple platforms, and means eCommerces can directly target the customers who are most likely to convert. More conversions means a boost in sales and increased profit margins.
Image Analytics
Artificial Intelligence is becoming smarter at recognising images and labelling them using machine-learning-based algorithms. This algorithm, known as Image Analytics, can identify images of humans or objects and accurately label features of the image. For example, it would be able to scan an image of a woman wearing an outfit and pull out features of the outfit such as “blue jeans” or “white trainers”. Or, it may be able to recognise that an image of a lamp is “a lamp” and link it to other images of “lamps”.
Although these labels are simple, they can prove incredibly beneficial to eCommerce retailers because it can help to capture emerging worldwide trends across multiple online platforms, which can help to inform future business and trend strategy.
What’s more, if a user is shopping for a product on your site but it is sold out, Image Analytics can suggest similar products to that user in an attempt to retain them as a customer and boost conversion rates. This is a modern-day digital solution to the hardship of retaining customers online.
Chatbots
Customer service is of the utmost importance for all businesses, but especially for online eCommerce retailers. Through the loss of face-to-face interaction they must work harder to build trust with customers.
In today’s digital space shopping processes are efficient and instant, and so it’s important that customer support is, too. This is where eCommerce brands can really benefit from AI-powered chatbots to provide round-the-clock customer support.
Chatbots are used frequently online to answer FAQs and handle simple order queries. Plus, when integrated into the shopping cart they can retrieve all relevant order information which can equip the technology to be more helpful and give more accurate answers.
Chatbots alleviate a lot of challenges retailers face and drastically free up business resources, making operations more productive. In fact, businesses that don’t utilise chatbots waste valuable resources and risk looking amateurish in a contemporary market.
Responsive omni-channel customer support
Another way AI is benefitting eCommerce retailers is through Omni-channel customer support, enabling a seamless and uniform customer experience across multiple channels – online and off-line.
It is incredibly important that all channels work in conjunction with one another – from the retail site, to social media pages, to the physical store and every platform in between. An example of when omni-channel customer support works at its best is when a customer can order something online to be picked up in their local store. This cross-channel convenience is what is expected in today’s digital age.
Consistency is key for building rapport between brand and customer, and the better a brand’s customer service is, the better their reputation will be and the more leads they will garner.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence is a force to be reckoned with, and it is evolving more and more every day. The sky’s the limit with the advances machine-based-learning can make, and businesses can expect to reap more incredible rewards from the incredible insights it will surely provide.