AI is not a futuristic technology anymore. Instead, it has become a much inevitable aspect of the modern-day sectors. Almost all the leading industries today, including e-learning, and even real-estate, are leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance their business operations.
However, one of the significant sectors that have thoroughly utilized robust AI technology is the retail sector. Yes, you heard it right! The e-commerce industry is leveraging artificial intelligence to a much larger extent. With the advancements in machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics, the e-commerce industry witnessed huge profits and customers.
As per research, AI will generate global revenue of USD 36 billion in the eCommerce industry by 2025. That is a considerable rise! AI has a far-reaching penetration in e-commerce that has enabled many businesses to multiply their profits. But, how exactly has AI revolutionized the eCommerce sector in the past few years?
Here are a few ways by which AI has been benefiting the retail industry and will continue to do so in the coming future.
#1. Voice-based Assistants
Voice assistants are the most crucial aspect offered by AI that has been benefiting the e-commerce industry for quite some time now. The voice-based search enables the user to look for any particular item using their voice commands. That’s amazing, as the user does not need to type anything. They can use their voice commands to search for anything with the help of targeted keywords. That not only saves time of the user but also enhances the user experience and brand value.
#2. Automated Warehouse Operations
Managing warehouse operations is a tedious task for many of the retailers and e-commerce companies. They have to look at what’s in stock, and where a particular item has been, and all these tasks often consume a lot of their crucial time. To solve all those issues, AI emerged as a perfect tool! AI-enabled robots are being used in many e-commerce giant companies like Amazon to place similar items together.
The use of the Computer Vision System further enables the robots to categorize and identify each item by analyzing the image from a distance. Additionally, when the stock is updated every time, then these AI-driven robots securely track that everything is at its place or not. That thing is achieved with Decision Logics and AI optimization. All in all, AI helps the e-commerce giants to receive the correct orders and to deliver them timely and correctly.
#3. Personalized Searches
Now, who doesn’t like to get personalized services? Every person loves to get personalized recommendations from the site they make purchases. Many of the leading firms today are leveraging AI to provide customized product recommendations to loyal customers.
The AI engines analyze the shopping patterns of your customers. After carefully analyzing their interests, the engine shows them their favorite products and offers that they would be interested in. Eventually, AI makes the customer much involved and engaged in your e-commerce site, and hence their chances of buying the products increases.
#4. Effective Chatbot Support
Chatbots are an excellent application of artificial intelligence and machine learning. They help you enhance your customer services by automating the complete process efficiently. Customer service is the most valuable part of any organization or more precise for any e-commerce business. While communicating with the customers, 24*7 is not feasible; chatbots make it happen practically.
The chatbots can communicate with the customers and provide solutions to all their problems much quickly and effectively. The further advancements in the field of AI even enable the chatbots to understand complex language and emotions of the customer. The AI advancements improved the working of the chatbots and enhanced customer services for many e-commerce businesses.
#5. AI-driven Advertising
While it is true that many leading e-commerce firms are leveraging AI applications, one thing that has not to be discovered by most of them is the ability to market their products with AI. Yes, you heard it right! AI can sell your products across different channels with a single click.
In fact, the approach has already been used by many leading names like Swiggy, Maruti Suzuki, Konga, and so on. The online marketplace platform uses deep learning and natural language processing techniques to run Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc. from one place. You can even run your ad campaigns on different platforms without having a detailed knowledge of SEO and digital marketing!
You can even get a complete picture of how your campaigns are performing and can also allocate them appropriate budgets with AI-driven marketing tools. That eventually helps you reach large audiences, increasing your chance of converting more people to your customers.
#6. Image Recognition Technique
Image search is somewhat a new term that has been adopted by the e-commerce industry. With image search functionality, the customers need not remember the exact keyword of the product. Nor do they need to invest their time in searching the product across thousands of other products. Image searching functionality can do it all!
A fantastic AI application, image searching, is a robust functionality that allows the user to search for a specific product using an image. Meaning, the user can upload the image of a particular product or a similar picture of that product on the site, and he/she is good to go. The AI engine will analyze that image and will display all the products similar to that image. The user can then get precise results of his/her searches in no time.
Many e-commerce companies like Amazon, Clarifai, and Visenze have already adopted the image search functionality to enhance their user experience. Additionally, the advancements in techniques like deep learning and computer vision further make it possible for the AI engine to recognize the color and fabric of the product from the image. Pretty smart, right?
#7. Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity has always been a concern for almost all the businesses that have stepped into the online marketplace. From education to healthcare, cybersecurity has always been a trending topic. In such a digital scenario, the e-commerce business is no exception!
The e-commerce sites deal with a vast amount of personal information of the users. These personal data include the name and contact details and contains bank details of many of the users. In such a case, even a small lapse in the data could lead to significant issues and losses.
However, with the emergence of AI, the field of cybersecurity is also improving a lot. AI helps many e-commerce giants secure their crucial data by simplifying their data into small chunks that could be easily managed. The business now finds it easy to manage their data and secure it from online thefts.
#8. Accurate Sales Forecasting
Last but not least, another benefit of AI that the e-commerce industry has been leveraging is accurate sales forecasting. Many times, the businesses either are left with too much or have a shortage of specific products. In both scenarios, there are often losses associated with the business. So, to mitigate those losses, AI again stepped into the e-commerce business!
With powerful and intelligent tools, AI enables e-commerce businesses to accurately know how their offers and products will impact their sales. Meaning, you can understand what a particular offer will do to your annual sales and how much to expect it. On the other hand, you can even get the information about which product will get over, and thus you can inform your valuable customer to buy it as soon as possible!
Are you Leveraging AI Tools for your E-commerce Site?
So, those were some of the benefits that AI is providing to e-commerce businesses. To conclude, we can say that the growth of digitization in the global market brought many changes and technologies, and AI is the strongest of them. AI took the whole global market by storm, and the e-commerce industry was no exception. With its ability to serve continually changing customer needs, almost all the leading e-commerce businesses are today leveraging AI in their sales and marketing processes.
Do you want to become a part of the same community? Do you want to increase your customer experience and profits while maintaining your brand at the top? If yes, then indeed, AI is the best tool for that! It is ever-growing technology that will soon transform the e-commerce sector into a wholly new and profitable global market aspect!