Future of Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce Industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized processes in almost every industry. The retail industry hasn’t stayed behind in implementing AI to enhance its customer experience. The global market size of AI in retail was ascertained to be 3.01 billion USD in 2019 and is projected to reach 23.32 billion USD by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 29.6% during the forecast period.

AI has been a boom to both customers and retailers participating in the eCommerce industry. This technology helps e-commerce companies to analyze data and offer a personalized experience to their customers. AI further provides retailers with innovations such as virtual buying assistants that refine customer experience (CX) even further. AI applications today are capable of analyzing data provided by the customer to predict their future purchasing patterns and make product suggestions. This improvement in CX holds the key to establish a successful online business.

According to Gartner, 85% of the customers manage their relationship with eCommerce companies without interacting with a human.

With chats, emails, and calls now being routed to automated systems, these numbers will only go up in the future. Let us now understand the impact of AI in the e-commerce industry and analyze how things can change in the upcoming years.

Stated below are the top 5 ways in which artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the domain of eCommerce –

• Advanced Visual Search

Advanced visual search is a boon for all the eCommerce clothing and home decor companies. This technology uses screenshots, photographs, internet images to provide accurate online search results.

With the average users’ attention span reducing at an alarming rate, AI-driven visual search algorithms will play a crucial role in the eCommerce industry, especially in this digital era of image-based social media platforms. The advent of visual search technology has made the life of eCommerce users easy, as it allows them to search for similar products by uploading an image of a product.

• Personalized Recommendations

The recommended section of an eCommerce website exhibits their buying patterns and preferences. AI is responsible for this, as it makes smart recommendations after tracking the user and analyzing their data.

Let’s suppose that you are buying gym gloves from an eCommerce website. Now, the AI-powered suggestions will show you other gym paraphernalia such as gym belts or protein powder.

These targeted recommendations make it convenient for a buyer to make multiple purchases that they might require seamlessly, making it a profitable enterprise for the eCommerce website.

• Voice Assistance

With innovation in AI, many new technologies have come to the fore, enhancing the customer experience for eCommerce companies. Voice assistance, one of the most prominent technologies, enables customers to save time and effort by allowing them to look for their product without the inconvenience of typing. This trend can be quantified by the fact that 62% of smart speaker owners in 2020 used their devices to make online purchases.

Since smart devices have become an integral part of our lifestyle, a voice interface is essential to take the next step in smoothening the eCommerce experience. Placing orders using natural speech has many advantages over typing as it allows the user to do multiple tasks rather than concentrating on typing, it’s also faster than any of the conventional methods, making it a requisite for the advancement of the eCommerce industry.

• Automated product descriptions

Product information and customer reviews are indispensable for a user to make purchase decisions. A recent market survey showcased that around 87% of the people shopping online spend time going through the product descriptions before adding the product to their cart.

So, if the product description is not available, a visitor is more likely to move on to other sources, regardless of the quality of the image.

On the flip side, writing descriptions for an ever-growing product inventory can also become an ordeal. This issue can be resolved with the help of AI, as AI is capable of formulating details for millions of products and optimizing their description for better search results.

AI does more than just copying information from the manufacturer’s website; it combs the entire internet to find relevant facts about the product in the store and note the most prominent features to optimize search results.

• Automation in Warehouse

With customers opting for same-day or next-day delivery, it has become essential to automate processes in warehouses.

In addition to this, eCommerce companies have seen a rapid increase in order volumes. Meeting such enormous demands has become almost impossible for warehouses with their old practices. AI-based testing and inventory management that work 24×7 without taking breaks or sick leaves have become a mainstay in these warehouses to tackle these issues.

Robots can communicate with the warehouse management software to complete an order without any human involvement. Smart robots can do almost anything but drive a delivery truck. But with the advancements being made by companies such as Tesla, even that reality doesn’t seem distant.

In a nutshell

AI will perform all the tedious tasks that are essential for the functioning of an eCommerce business. It will provide sellers with information about the behavior of their customers, allowing eCommerce companies to target them effectively.

AI-based technology allows eCommerce companies to provide a personalized experience, ultimately boosting their sales and improving their user retention.