You’ve probably had the feeling before that an online retailer is reading your mind — suggested products matching your exact tastes, banner ads seemingly tailored to your specific needs, and special offers arriving right when you’re ready to buy.
This isn’t a coincidence. It also isn’t the result of employees studying your buying habits to figure out future purchasing trends. Rather, it’s an excellent example of artificial intelligence in e-commerce.
One study found that 70% of e-commerce decision-makers in North America and Europe believed AI would help their businesses.
Far from being a fluke, these e-commerce clients experienced similar sky-high spikes in sales by placing recommended products on other site pages. The study demonstrated one of the most compelling early use cases of AI improving the user experience and boosting sales.
1. Personalized Product Recommendations
What’s the goal of using AI in e-commerce applications, exactly? Perhaps the most important function of the kinds of technology used in e-commerce is assessing how customers behave and what they’re most likely to buy.
Data like purchase history and browsing behavior are fed into AI algorithms to make scarily accurate predictions. These predictions then become personalized product recommendations.
For example, if an Amazon shopper frequently purchases computer parts commonly used to build gaming systems, the algorithm will make a note of this.
AI can cross-reference a shopper’s history with other users who exhibit similar behavior and recommend computer games, gaming peripherals, desks, and cables or even promote upcoming releases of hotly anticipated products, such as video cards and processors.
2. AI-Generated Product Descriptions
Content generation is time-consuming, and creating new descriptions for thousands of products can take hundreds of hours. The data collected by AI in e-commerce can identify frequently used SEO keywords, which it can then use to create descriptions that drive better search rankings.
The bottom line is that writers who rely on AI can craft more product descriptions with greater detail in less time.
3. Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
Every company should strive for superior customer service, but not every company can afford 24/7 support staff. With AI chatbots, the vast majority of customer inquiries can be handled nearly instantly without the need for human labor or the costs that come with it.
4. Customer Segmentation and Targeting
If you’ve ever run social media ads, you’re familiar with the concept of targeting potential customers based on differentiators like income, location, and interests. AI makes such targeting much quicker.
Businesses can use AI-gathered data to create and modify marketing campaigns and even let the AI send personalized offers and ads to users.
5. Demand Forecasting
The data collected by AI in e-commerce applications can be used to predict more than a single customer’s potential buying habits.
AI can forecast what items will sell well or poorly and whether the market is hot or cold for certain trends. In response, businesses can modify their product lines, order the right quantities of stock or materials, optimize inventory, and avoid over or understocking.
6. Fraud Detection and Prevention
That same data that predicts sales habits can also identify fraudulent behavior. If, for example, a customer suddenly starts buying items they’ve never purchased before and has orders shipped to a different address, it can indicate identity theft. Using AI to detect such patterns can prevent customers from being scammed.
7. Dynamic Pricing
Keeping up with competitor prices, market conditions, labor and materials costs, and second-hand item values can be a full-time job. AI can monitor all the conditions that factor into a product’s price and modify that price dynamically in real-time.
8. Supply Chain Optimization
More than simply taking material and shipping costs into account, AI can also optimize the supply chain. AI can handle inventory management to ensure that items are stored in the most logical locations, improve logistics routing, and automate paperwork.
For users, this means fast order fulfillment with few to no mistakes. For businesses, this means higher efficiency with fewer costs.
9. Sentiment Analysis
Customers want to be heard, whether they loved a product or had a poor experience. Online customer feedback and reviews can be beneficial or detrimental to a product’s success, and how a company responds is crucial.
Using AI to analyze customer feedback can show areas for product or customer service improvement, allowing companies to respond appropriately and make changes.
10. Voice Commerce
Retailers aim to make the purchasing process as easy as possible. AI-powered assistants like Alexa or Google Assist let users make orders through voice commands, bypassing the need to visit websites or e-commerce platforms. Voice commerce is an incredibly convenient tool that makes hands-free shopping possible.
Leverage AI with Print Bind Ship
Good data paired with well-designed AI is a stupendously powerful way to find and keep new customers. If you’re unsure how to integrate AI into your e-commerce business, Print Bind Ship is here for you. We use AI to analyze and act on consumer data, giving you the resources you need to boost your business.
Remember, personalization is paramount these days. We can use AI-gathered data to create individualized marketing campaigns with our Mail Genius platform. Mail Genius makes it possible to send out custom notecards and offers, cool swag, and handwritten notes using our special technology.
Embrace the future of AI and contact Print Bind Ship to take your business to the next level!
FAQ
Using artificial intelligence in e-commerce allows businesses to collect data to personalize recommendations, speed up deliveries, respond to questions with chatbots, and provide faster ordering through voice commerce.
To say the least. Thanks to the AI technologies used in e-commerce, small businesses can cut manpower needs, improve efficiency, and reduce the consumption of valuable resources.
Not at the moment. Right now, AI is a dynamic tool that can be used to improve and speed up certain jobs, but it must still be monitored and checked to ensure that the results are accurate.