Ecommerce or Electronic Commerce, a name that alludes to buying and selling of goods and services primarily through the internet. This virtual transaction is not confined to one significant sector only. In fact, it is globally disrupting the entire business paradigm from traditional operations to more digitalized and efficient way. This virtual connectivity has led buyers and consumers to be on one platform without any physical evidence to explore and discover new products through service providers and interact with each other at such a larger scale which was not possible with conventional offline retail. This degree of independence has led consumers to make a purchase with free will without any duress. Artificial Intelligence whose actual purpose is to replicate human intelligence into machines has revolutionized the way businesses communicate and interact with their potential prospects.
Artificial Intelligence in Online Shopping
Before the advent of technology and e-commerce, the online virtual market did not exist. Back in the days, the traditional method of retail shops was more mainstream as people usually visit the outlets to personally see and analyze the products and experience the physical evidence before making a purchase. This whole process was quite intriguing and enthralling if one step was missed out in this process the purchase would not be evident. But now the whole scenario is reversed because individuals can now shop in the blink of the eye, anywhere and everywhere around the globe regardless of territorial boundary to make their virtual shopping experience more convenient and comfortable at the palm of their hands whether they are at their workstation or at home this does not restrict them to shop from one particular region or geography. This open space is for everyone who has access to the internet. With the emergence of artificial intelligence especially in online shopping, the entire business framework is modified to a greater extent to carry out daily operations more efficiently and smartly.
Artificial Intelligence has helped organizations to a considerable amount to gain the traction of the potential customers by using huge data sets of the prospects and then predicting the consumer buying behavior pattern according to their liking. This results in increasing the knowledge regarding consumer preferences and gaining insights about what customer wants. Hence, this upshot for better customer-brand relationship and also enhances customer experiences as well which leads to higher supportive intention and customer loyalty.
With the deployment of Artificial Intelligence in online shopping companies can render extreme personalization to the customers which result in more engagement on sites hence making the top 1% of the customer 18 times more worthwhile than average customers. Knowing such touch points about the customers can benefit a plethora of companies because personalizing product and service recommendations by analyzing the customer past purchase and preferences through Artificial Intelligence technology may possibly increase customer satisfaction as well.
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in E-Commerce
One of the best parts about Artificial Intelligence is that it has not confined itself to one paradigm. It can be used in various ways such as the benefits of Artificial Intelligence especially in E-commerce helps in gaining customer insights, content generation and chatbots. Chatbots are software that uses AI to have an online conversation at the back of the system with the customer through text or speech medium when people visit their website. E-commerce retailers use chatbots and other Artificial Intelligence assisted customer service tools to render the 24×7 support system to help online shoppers as an efficient way of improving the customer journey. This all has been possible because of chatbots. Currently, many E-commerce businesses such as Amazon, eBay and Flipkart tend to make use of these special assisted AI virtual chatbots which also extends their services to applications like Facebook Messenger as well. These chatbots have immense benefits not only it brings more satisfied customers but it also aids companies to save a lot of money in customer service by making sure to address almost 90% of the regular customers that were asked by the customers. These chatbots also ensure that the time frame of e-commerce also increases.
Furthermore, it ensures to make the informed decision making. With its predictive analytical expertise, it allows e-commerce vendors to make rational decision making to send the right kind of message to the prospect. Rather than sending mass emails to every segment. It helps the service provider to send customize and personalized messages to the customers which are made for their interest based on their behavior on your particular sites. This allows more traffic on online websites and enriches customer experience as well.
Artificial Intelligence in E-Commerce Startups
Artificial Intelligence has also lent its services in the retail industry which provide solutions to the service provider to help e-commerce websites.
Signifyd- Retail and E-Commerce Fraud Detection
Raising $180 million capitals, this Artificial Intelligence startup helps retailers to save money that is lost due to fraud and progressively increases revenue through customer analytics. Startups like Signifyd known to be retail and E-commerce detecting fraud company. Formed its bases in 2011 a well-funded Artificial Intelligence company in the fraud detection industry for retail and e-commerce. With the help of anomaly detection technology, it is used to find fraudulent transaction and prevent chargebacks through machine learning algorithms.
Capillary Technologies-Customer Engagement and Analytics
Founded in 2008, with $102.2 million Capillary Technologies raised the capital but announced their solutions after almost a decade back in spring 2018. Engage+ is one of the Artificial Products they possess which constitutes a digital platform for digital marketing such as ad campaigns, scheduling sales calls and sales emails. This predictive analytical technology has the ability to determine how likely a customer responds to a given campaign. Engage + enables schedules and timelines for ad campaigns so that email engagements can be sent to the right people at the right time by the marketers. This Artificial Intelligence-based software develops dynamic promotional offers which constantly changes its self-depending upon various factors.
Sift Anomaly Detection Based Identity and Account Verification
With $106.6 million funding, Sift was founded in 2011 but announced its account defence in January 2019. Account Defense their main product reportedly uses anomaly detection technology. This technology offers solutions to the retailers by verifying the account information and identity of the customer. This software allows retailers to track suspicious logins or login attempts and prevent fraud.
Future of Artificial Intelligence in E-Commerce
Artificial Intelligence is changing the way e-commerce stores usually do businesses. This market disruptor is constantly striving to modify the world of online shopping. With a market of $ 2 trillion, artificial intelligence has the predictive capability to push this significant figure even more further. It has great future potential to facilitate its services in any industry.
Rendering smarter searches
Artificial Intelligence has replaced the way how human assistance was present in the physical stores but with the amalgamation of machine learning and artificial learning, the service providers can amplify their online searches to a greater extent so that software can understand the predictive long term search and customer main purpose as well, which not only forecast the customer wants and needs but it also curates the tailor-made suggestions to fit there required needs. Hence making search results moderate to excellent.
Going deep down the line, voice search and artificial intelligence assistants is an eye-catching component because shopping through voice search is totally a different game-changer like never before. The way they respond to individual requests promptly is quite amazing because the experience needs to feel more intimate and real as if they are actually interacting and communicating with a human instead of a machine.
Hyper- Personalized with Product Recommendation
Amazon one of the largest e-commerce practising company in the world knows the nitty-gritty of the potential customers. Working all up from the browsing history to the purchasing history Amazon crafted recommendations for products that the customer like and they will most probably show an interest in. This not only prevents them from seeing extra and unintended products but you are quickly able to move towards those products which can garner customers interest as well. This is known as hyper-personalization. This tailored-made suggestions and recommendations could cater down a huge gap from the time when the online service provider could only recommend the same bestseller to everyone, this pitfall to low customer conversion which was not crafted according to the specific requirements of the customers.
Inventory Management
This predictive analyst makes quite around in the inventory management world. To avoid the seesaw of the over or understock inventory management is an essential part of any business but to avoid losing cash because of overstock and missing out on sales due to understock. It is important to track the inventory because not managing it properly and maintenance can result in the downfall of e-commerce stores. Humanly it is impossible to make accurate predictions about sales thus we can up in cash flow problems. Once, the AI runs the forecast becomes quite convenient, easier and hassle-free. This ensures that the supply chain is under your command and makes you more knowledgeable about customer behaviors. This saves a lot of time, money and energy and helps you to operate your business more efficiently.