The eCommerce industry has seen many leaps and bounds recently due to mobile-first strategies by enterprises and digital enhancements in the way the products are offered. If you are an E-commerce business, there are certain technology shifts that you should consider before you strategize your business for growth.
Most of the e-commerce businesses today rely on digital channels that are already seeing vital changes. Total revenue for 2019 of the e-commerce market has been $1,800,517 million in 2019 and will increase up to $2,674,077 million by 2023 with a compound annual growth rate of 10.4%. As the data suggests, the e-commerce industry has been on the front of revenue. Here, we are going to exploit the endless positive effect these technological shifts provide.
1. The AI transition:
Application of AI and machine learning can be seen in e-commerce and has been successful too. There have been many such applications and few of them are discussed here:
Visual and Voice Search Assistants:
Alternative search methods are quite popular and are already on the soaring side and further take-off can be expected among other digital marketing trends, including chatbots, artificial intelligence, and vertical video. Visual and voice search assistants are already rather common among consumers. Think of all the Siris, Alexas, and Google Lens and you will see that they are already here.
With such technologies already being used by several search engines and platforms, there is a huge scope for e-commerce businesses to cash in on the popular medium. The visual search can be used by collaborating machine learning and computer vision to capture an image in real life and then gather information online.
Mainly used for identification of the products, these visual assistants like the famous, Google Lens can copy and paste text from a recipe, identify a dog’s breed, and even recommend the colors for your home decor. Voice assistants, on the other hand, are quite common these days with the power of a voice recognition system. They leverage the audio technology to produce search results for users speaking over the phone or some device.
Chatbots and intelligent machines:
Chatbots and intelligent machines are already making consumer interactions with e-commerce businesses more enhanced and engaging. Especially, the banking sector has seen chatbots as the first point of interaction for digital banking services. Many other e-commerce websites are also looking to engulf the highly intelligent machines for better customer engagements and interaction
After-Sales services can be made more personalized and user-specific using the techniques of data analytics and intelligent machines altogether. A virtual assistant is also popular in the e-commerce segment. It helps users achieve good suggestions for the referred problems. and also used in product recommendation systems through Natural Language Programming.
2. Internet of Things (IoT):
Internet of Things has gained much traction over the years with new technological advancements and innovations into remote and mobile technology. Wearable technology has marked the presence of wireless devices that are used for data exchange, storage and analysis through intelligent systems.
Three pillars of IoT application that improves the e-commerce domain are:
- Connectivity: IoT ensures better connectivity among the IoT based devices to keep the e-commerce markets in constant touch with its targeted consumers. This connectivity improves the data exchanges through several sensors attached to such devices.
- Exchange Servers: With the serverless environments and popular cloud-based solutions, the handling of data, analysis of data and data preservation become quite easy and with techniques like deep learning, data analytics and scrutiny of the data, better results can be achieved.
- Engagement: IoT devices ensure higher consumer engagement and more personalized customer journeys through methods like gamification allowing the e-commerce products to be marketed and sold with a rather personal touch.
3. Automation:
Automation at any level can improve e-commerce sales as e-commerce is based on faster services, better customer engagement and better after-sales services and all of these can be achieved through effective automation. several different types of automation are enhancing the e-commerce business.
Delivery Automation:
Enterprises around the world are looking to capitalize on the automation technologies that are enhancing the delivery paradigm to new heights with automated delivery vehicles. Amazon has been actively building such machines that can deliver products without human intervention. As can be seen in the below-given video, Amazon has been developing drones and robots to deliver products.
Similarly, other e-commerce giants are also looking forward to cashing it into the innovative automated delivery realm and capitalize on the same by providing products faster and more conveniently.
4. AR/VR- Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality:
“Artificial Reality” – as it may be called as there are three pillars to the virtual world- Augmented Reality, Virtual reality, and Mixed Reality. Virtual Reality is more like an artificial world created through a computer that replaces a real world, where you can be in it and interact with the virtual objects and augmented reality is quite the opposite, it allows you to interact with virtual objects in real-world like they are a part of it.
Image Source:rubygardge
Then there is a mixed reality, which is like an augmented reality with a more immersive experience as it has virtual objects interacting with the real world and the same it can do with you. E-commerce firms can hire developers team to create such mixed reality products for consumers. As these technologies have changed the way products are tried by the customers today.
Today, most of the e-commerce firms and websites are working on AR/VR/ MR to create an experience for their consumers based on virtual representations of their products that can give users a real experience.
Concluding Thoughts:
E-commerce is booming right now and making the business more robust through these technology shifts can change the commercial and economical scenario of e-commerce firms. One of the most retained issues is cart abandonment, most of the firms and e-commerce websites have experienced this issue as customers browse through many products and place them in the cart and then abandon the cart for several different issues and by tapping into such technical shifts, they can make sure the problem of cart abandonment, if not resolved, can be reduced.
Manoj Rupareliya is a Marketing Consultant and blogger. who has been writing for various blogs? He has previously covered an extensive range of topics in his posts, including Business, Technology, Finance, Make Money, Cryptocurrency, and Start-ups. Linkedin | Twitter
