Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology have grown to be an important part of running a business, especially in this era of digitization. Many industries, from healthcare, manufacturing, service, media, and more, are seeing unmatched transformation by implementing AI and ML. This technological advancement is helping businesses extract value from the massive data collected daily, giving valuable insights for business growth. AI and machine learning have also been used in automating tasks and advancing other system capabilities. And the E-commerce industry isn’t an exemption. Though still in its infancy stages, machine learning and AI are game changers in the E-commerce landscape. Here are a few ways technology is helping e-commerce businesses thrive.
Impact of AI and Machine Learning on the eCommerce Industry
Optimizing customer experience
Customer experience has become an essential tool in customer retention and sales conversions. The modern consumer will likely stick to brands offering superior online shopping experiences. AI and machine learning are helping online retailers to use collected data about their customers to offer an optimized experience on and off the website. Knowledge graph machine learning helps analyze data, giving reliable and easily digestible results, allowing retailers to make sense of the massive data collected to offer an unmatched experience. Here are ways AI and machine learning help optimize customer experience:
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- Use past customer activity data to offer a personalized experience – AI and machine learning use predictive analysis to offer personalized product recommendations based on previous buying habits and product searches.
- Use customer data to tailor marketing and advertising messages – Email marketing messages that customers find irrelevant are likely to end up in the spam folder. AI and machine learning can learn customer preferences to enable more personalized content that resonates with the customer.
- Streamlining search function – Based on past buying habits, AI allows retailers to enable smart searches on the website, such as autocorrect typos and predictive text. Additionally, it enhances visual and voices search, giving customers a good experience when searching using pictures or voice commands.
Price optimization
It is a natural tendency for customers to want to compare prices from different retailers before making a purchase. Unfortunately, if your price or shipping cost is on the higher side, you risk seeing more carts abandoned. That is why offering optimum prices is crucial.
However, determining the optimum price is harder than you can imagine. It would take collecting and analyzing large quantities of data from competitors from different regions of the globe if your business is global. Make sure that you have different types of payment methods that ease up your workload. That is where AI and machine learning comes in handy.
Machine learning algorithms can merge new pricing patterns, competitors’ prices, product availability, product demand, promotions, and other price determinants such as urgency and buyers’ intent to optimize prices.
Enhanced customer service
Improving customer support is important in earning customers’ loyalty for increased sales and repeat business. Using AI-powered chatbots, retailers can offer customer support on the website around the clock. These bots can be trained to answer simple customer queries in a natural language to help customers get around the site easily. Besides enhancing customer service, this also frees up customer service personnel, allowing them more time to focus on other important tasks.
Inventory management
Inventory management can be quite challenging for E-commerce retailers, especially dealing with many products. AI and machine learning help streamline stock management through predictive analysis and using customer data. The technology seeks to understand customer behaviors and preferences and predicts product demand. This helps stock items that are ideal for your customers.
In addition, AI algorithms can automate stock replenishment based on past and present sales data. This ensures that customers get what they want as and when they need it.
Fraud protection
The online space is prone to fraud and other malicious people out to scam innocent customers. If fraud happens on your E-commerce site, restoring customer trust can be an uphill task. Proactively preventing disasters before they happen is the best line of defense.
AI and machine learning can help detect fraud before it happens. You can use AI-powered tools and techniques to evaluate and analyze user behavior. The security department is alerted in real-time and acts accordingly if any abnormalities are detected.
Conclusion
AI and machine learning have been used across industries to deliver value and offer valuable insights that drive business growth. For example, for E-commerce retailers, the importance of this technology manifests in customer experience, pricing optimization, and improved customer service. In addition, AI and machine learning can enhance inventory management and protect from fraud, among other benefits.
