The concept of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has been around for a long time. AI has been gradually shifting from the confines of science fiction novels and movies to real-world applications. We are now witnessing a rapid adoption of AI in virtually every industry. AI-enabled applications can deliver valuable insights and meaningful benefits to businesses today. eCommerce, among other sectors, has been at the forefront of adopting AI, thanks to the massive growth the industry has been experiencing. AI can prove to be a precious resource for eCommerce businesses, and it is undoubtedly a technology that business owners shouldn’t be overlooking. The thought of adopting a brand new technology can be overwhelming. In this article, we’ll let you in on how you can use artificial intelligence to enhance and improve your eCommerce brand and scale your business.
Why use AI for eCommerce business?
It’s only a matter of time that AI will almost become an inevitable part of the shopping experience. Becoming an early adopter of AI for your eCommerce brand comes with several benefits, including accurate reporting, ensuring orders are shipped accurately, and optimizing inventory. Artificial intelligence can enhance your eCommerce brand and help you scale your business in the following ways:
- Optimize inventory with accurate demand forecasting
- Effectively market, cross-sell, and up-sell
- Improve customer service with intelligent chatbots
- Personalize shopping experiences
- Make smarter decisions with insightful reports
Optimize inventory with accurate demand forecasting
How you manage your inventory has a far-reaching impact on every other part of your business. Managing your inventory can become increasingly challenging when your business grows, especially identifying which items to restock and when. Artificial intelligence can help you identify slow-moving products so that you can run laser-focused promotions to clear out slow-moving items and optimize your inventory. In comparison with traditional methods, AI can produce accurate demand forecasts so that you can avoid understocking and overstocking.
Effectively market, cross-sell, and up-sell
Today’s business environment is highly competitive and acquiring new customers is expensive and challenging. While digital marketing, including paid ads and social marketing, sometimes offers excellent returns, retargeting your existing and potential customer base is far easier and cheaper. Retargeting can play a considerable role in driving those potential customers back to your website and increase conversions. AI can track and analyze customer behavior and give you valuable insights into their intents, buying patterns. Using AI in your marketing efforts lets you focus your retargeting efforts and increase your chance of pushing conversions.
Improve customer service with intelligent chatbots
Chatbots are a great way to help customers navigate through eCommerce websites and respond to requests. It helps reduce customer service costs by providing round-the-clock coverage and freeing up your live agents to focus on more critical interactions. Chatbots can tap into your existing resources such as FAQs, knowledge base, and previous conversations to provide quick and personalized support to your website visitors.
Personalize shopping experiences
Using artificial intelligence to provide potential customers with personalized recommendations for products can significantly boost your sales. With AI, you can make your website search take advantage of a visitor’s search and purchase history to recommend similar products. You can also use the same data to run laser-focused marketing campaigns for potential customers and increase your revenue.
Make smarter decisions with insightful reports
Like every other business, making data-backed decisions is critical for your eCommerce brand’s success. Most reporting tools available today can aggregate data from multiple sources and produce decent reports. AI takes reporting to a new level by helping you analyze data, uncover hidden insights and make accurate predictions.
Final thoughts
We’ve seen how AI can help enhance your eCommerce brand – from delivering better customer service to increasing your revenue and optimizing your inventory. AI may be relatively new technology, but it’s never too early for your eCommerce business to begin realizing the benefits of this powerful technology.
