Growth & Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce

Time has changed a lot since people were sceptical about eCommerce been a successful business model. The world is now a global village and millions of people are now making purchases and transactions online. According to Emarketer, eCommerce has a market share of around $2 trillion in sales across and by 2021 it is expected to have a market share of around 16% of the global retail sales at $4.479 trillion.

eCommerce has experienced huge growth over the recent years, thanks to the technological advancements and other factors like globalization. As technology evolves, so does businesses. And it is not at all a surprise when we see artificial intelligence (AI) making its presence felt in the eCommerce sector. As per a report by the Business Insider, it is expected that by 2020 around 85% of customer interactions in eCommerce will be performed by bots.

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in eCommerce Sector:

1. Search has become more customers centric within online stores

It has been seen that due to lack of customer-centric search results in eCommerce websites, a lot of users actually drop off. By making use of the AI tools and machine learning, search results can be significantly improved. Moreover, AI aided search results are also gaining prominence, that is luring businesses to provide a customer-centric experience. In this case, videos and images, such as logo, style and product are tagged, organised to provide visually relevant search for customers.

Pinterest has utilized the image recognition software for the chrome extension. In this process, customers are able to search for images across the web as per the choice of the product.

2. Customer experience has got more personalized

In case of a personalized customer experience, Artificial Intelligence can be used in eCommerce portals for personalized experiences. This is possible by making an analysis of comprehensive data and accordingly, products are recommended.

As per the study conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), retailers who provide personalized experiences have experienced around 6-10% increase in sales, which is two or three faster compared to other retailers.

3. Much better sales processes

In the previous era, sales depended heavily on yellow pages and such conventional means to attract customer attention. However, sales processes have moved on a lot from those days and now retailers make use of different kind of digital platforms. Sales teams nowadays use AI integrated CRM systems that cater to customer tastes and preferences. Moreover, AI can answer customer queries, solve problems and even identify new sales opportunities.

Getty Images has effectively made use of integrated AI tools in order to identify data to get an idea of which businesses use images from the competition. Accordingly, the sales team of Getty Images lures more target audiences and woos new businesses.

4. Targeting potential customers

A huge customer base has its advantages as well as challenges. Due to the numbers, it gets a bit difficult for sales and marketing teams to track prospective leads.

According to a study done by Conversica, around two-thirds of companies do not follow up on inbound sales leads. To resolve this issue, more and more eCommerce companies are taking help of AI in order to track consumer behaviour by observing their in-store behaviour (using facial recognition software) and online customers through different offers.

5. Better and efficient logistics

Making use of Artificial Intelligence in logistics also ensures a seamless and efficient delivery process. Nowadays, warehousing uses automation to a great extent and machine learning algorithms are used for automated warehousing operations. Most of the eCommerce giants, such as Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and others are making use of AI to a great extent in the form of machine learning and robotics. It is expected that the speed and efficiency will be improved to a great extent and it will also cut costs to a great extent.

If AI is used across different areas of eCommerce, such as warehousing and delivery, customer service and other internal operations, eCommerce will be boosted to a huge extent.