The eCommerce industry is growing and changing more than ever. With all of the new competition, it can be hard to stay competitive without some serious innovation. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) offers a lot of ways for eCommerce companies to enhance their business. Jason Simon, an expert in eCommerce, offers a few ways that AI can help eCommerce companies.
An ever-increasing number of shoppers are turning to online retail, and shops that want to stay competitive need to adapt. AI offers a lot of ways for eCommerce companies to enhance their business. As more and more shoppers turn to online retail, eCommerce companies need to adapt. According to a study by Statista, the sales of online retail are expected to grow by 15% in 2022. This means that those with eCommerce businesses need to find ways of enhancing their business in order to stay competitive in an increasingly crowded space.
AI offers a better understanding of where sales come from. “A robust analytics tool can help you better understand where your sales are coming from, and whether one marketing campaign is performing better than another. This data can be used to optimize your customer acquisition strategy and improve the performance of each campaign,” explains Simon.
You’ll also want to use analytics tools to analyze the performance of different product offerings on your site, so that you know what items should be featured more prominently in search results or on particular pages. Analyzing how customers interact with these products will help you make decisions about what kind of inventory management workflows would be most effective for them (such as whether they prefer faster shipping or free returns).
Additionally, eCommerce sites need a variety of payment options for their customers (especially when it comes time for repeat purchases). With an AI-powered recommendations engine at hand, online merchants can offer their shoppers an enhanced experience by suggesting potential methods of payment based on past activity—and even customizing those suggestions based on location or company size.
AI can help you predict sales and plan your inventory. AI can also help you plan your supply chain and logistics. This means it’s possible to optimize the flow of goods through a complex network of manufacturing, distribution centers, warehouses, and retail stores in order to minimize costs while maximizing revenue. In addition, AI can be used to optimize delivery schedules based on location and predicted demand for products at specific retail locations.
Offering more payment options helps you reach more customers, because some people may not have a credit card or want to use an alternative method. Some of the most common alternatives are gift cards, cash on delivery (COD) and e-wallets. When it comes to making it easy for customers to pay, remember that not all countries have the same types of cards as you do—for example, Switzerland doesn’t have a chip-and-PIN system like North America. Some consumers also prefer cash over credit card payments because they’re worried about identity theft or fraud.
AI can help eCommerce companies understand their customers better and, in turn, provide them with better customer service. AI can understand a customer’s needs based on previous interactions. Customer support agents can use this information to determine if a particular customer is confused about the services offered by your company or has specific questions about how to use one of your products.
AI can learn from previous interactions and make predictions about future interactions based on those patterns (for example, “This person tends to ask questions related to X product feature”). This way, we can provide proactive responses rather than simply answering questions after they’ve been asked. In fact, we actually created several scenarios where an agent wouldn’t even need to respond until after multiple requests had been made because it was clear there was no issue whatsoever.”
AI can help you understand your customers better and create a more personalized experience for them, which can attract more customers. In addition, it can more easily capture feedback from consumers. Explains Simon, “Feedback from your customers is vital to the success of your business. The most successful companies in the world are those that understand their customers and adapt their products and services accordingly.”
A good example of this can be seen in Amazon’s recent announcement of its new grocery store, Amazon Go. The company has been using machine learning for several years to create recommendations for customers based on past purchases. Still, the technology has reached a point where it could produce a more tangible result: an entire store without cashiers or checkout lines. Amazon Go aims to be a hybrid between an online shopping experience and brick-and-mortar stores, with AI providing personalized recommendations based on real-time data about consumer behavior at any given moment inside the store itself.
AI is a powerful tool that can help eCommerce businesses keep up with the changing trends in their industry. But it’s more than just a way to make your website work better—it also offers opportunities for you to understand your customers better and provide them with a more personalized experience. This means that AI could be one of the keys to helping smaller retailers survive in an increasingly competitive environment where larger companies are able to offer lower prices or a bigger selection.