3 Examples of How Machine Learning (AI) Can Improve Your eCommerce Shopping Experience
Technology is advancing at lightning speed with machine learning and artificial intelligence taking over. What we thought could be done by mortal beings is now done in an even better way by these technologies. The essence of AI has spread in every sector today including eCommerce. From non-manual cash registers to high-tech security verifications, AI has built a strong niche.
With the world shifting online and eCommerce exploding because of the isolation economy, eCommerce teams need to meet the demands of the market and provide 24/7 availability. This is where AI proves to be a hero. It tends to attain these goals by allowing companies to gather user information in real time.
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- AI in eCommerce is booming, with revenues expected to reach $36.8 Billion worldwide by 2025.
- 39% of IT leaders are using AI or machine learning today.
- While 33% said they expect to use it within the next three years and 19% expect to use it within five years.
When your website is not able to serve the visitor’s needs properly, precious sales are lost. One specific area to watch here is, without a doubt, artificial intelligence. With numerous companies having taken it upon themselves to apply machine learning and deep research to get an edge in the industry, adopting AI has become essential.
To generate more leads and achieve excellent user engagement on their websites, eCommerce businesses are joining hands with AI.
Discover how you can harness the power of machine learning to streamline and accelerate your eCommerce growth, in order to save time and grow sales.
Challenge #1: How can you attract new customers to promote your products and services?
Solution: Prioritize ad targeting, automate your store, and focus on building a new audience to enhance the sales game.
The way eCommerce is evolving, it has become imperative to leverage the tactics that could produce real results. The best marketers are using machine learning to understand, anticipate, and act on the issues their sales prospects are trying to resolve with more clarity than their competitors.
Automating website ads
Your ads might be great but not effective (if they don’t reach the right audience). AI and machine learning help marketers target their ads more effectively. You can make sure that your target audience is reached.
In addition to improving the ways your ads target the audience, machine learning can also help personalize the customer experience. Machine learning algorithms can predict what type of content would be most popular with every visitor.
For example: Delta Faucet used AI and machine learning to improve its website traffic.
After implementing machine learning, the company reported a 49% increase in page views. Further, 45% of the users that came from paid ads resulted in the audience spending at least 40 seconds on the website.
The number of clicks on CTA buttons also increased, and about 37% of users visited multiple pages in a single session. With machine learning used in the right way, personalized and targeted ads lead to higher user engagement.
AI uses technology and algorithms to collect user data and tell you exactly what they are looking for. As the eCommerce industry continues to grow, automation becomes a must. This means that robots in place of humans can easily take over and provide discounts, sales, and relevant product details to new customers.
Google’s recent £400m purchase of Deep-Mind (a startup), is just one of many acquisitions as the potential of AI turns into reality. Deep-Mind is an artificial intelligence company that specializes in algorithms and machine learning for positive impacts.
Other major tech firms such as Facebook, IBM, and Yahoo have also publicly expressed their focus on developing AI as a new business source. The reason for this is, through AI, businesses are generating new leads and providing an enhanced customer experience.
Advanced search engine optimization
Did you know that Google retrieves over 63,000 searches per second? So, if your eCommerce website is not showing up in appropriate search queries, you can have a tough time attracting new visitors. With artificial intelligence and machine learning paving the way in online business, advanced SEO tools can quickly identify website issues – thus, making it easier to improve your store’s search rankings.
AI-based websites have drastically transformed the customer experience with tools that understand the user’s requirements.
Challenge #2: Recommending the right products to every visitor
Solution: Creating customer-centric visual search, customer segmentation, and providing personalization beyond simple product recommendations.
Modern customer-centric search powered by AI thinks exactly like humans but better. Amazon’s Alexa app is a popular AI tool that helps learn the algorithms of their targeted marketing base. It makes it simple for Amazon to know its customers.
Alexa allows Amazon to gather information about a user and know which products will have the most demand based on their searches. This offers personalized recommendations and users get what they are seeking more easily.
Improving recommendation and segmentation for customers
Predict exactly what your customers need and then recommend the same. Using AI, you can automatically collect valuable insights, user data, purchase history, and much more. This way you can enhance product recommendations for all users, which can increase sales significantly through cross-selling and upselling.
eCommerce websites don’t have the same opportunities to resolve customer concerns as physical stores. Customers usually shop online for better convenience. They have a specific product in mind. So, if they find it easily on your website, the chances of them making a purchase are much higher.
“35% of consumer purchases on Amazon come from product recommendations.”
In order to serve your customers what they need, you need to collect a large amount of data. This is where machine learning helps. It helps eCommerce stores collect user’s information, preferences, etc., and analyze to come up with the best predictions and recommendations.
AI for hyper-personalization
AI allows you to create an integrated user experience that is most consistent with your brand and can strengthen your website efforts. With technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, you can easily advertise your products across mediums and create a seamless experience for every user.
“63% of consumers expect personalization from the brands they engage with.”
Hyper-personalization combines AI and real-time data to deliver information that is specifically relevant to a user. Think of it as “What if you have to click through tons of pages or more to get the desired product?”
Waste of time, right?
Users need a place where they can conveniently get the desired product/service without wasting time scrolling or turning pages. User personalization solutions that are based on AI are not limited to only product recommendations; they are more versatile. You can personalize the user’s shopping experience on many levels, for instance – personalized addressing styles, better product categorization, use of smart chatbots and voice controlled-services, etc.
Optimizing search results
Not all shoppers are good with keywords and not all searches are smart. In order to make a purchase, shoppers must be able to find what they are looking for. You might have all the products on your eCommerce website. However, it is of no good if your customers cannot conveniently get what they need. Through machine learning, your website can reveal search patterns, purchases, and preferences and then enable optimal search results.
Search results based on users’ data can show them the products they might be searching for, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
Challenge #3: Establishing better communication with your customers
Solution: Creating an interactive user experience by sentiment analysis, personalized emails, and live chat.
Customers look for ways to ease their experience and easily get in touch with your support team whenever required. AI enables “conversational eCommerce” that is built on top of visual, vocal, text and predictive capabilities.
Most customers hate calling on toll-free helpline numbers, listening to endless menu options, and struggling to connect with an actual person. Nobody looks forward to delayed responses. Automating customer support and enabling self-service can help both you and your customers.
“82% of customers are satisfied with their live chat experience on a website.”
Your eCommerce store has to be available 24/7. This means that it’s open even while you are sleeping. Here are some ways you can enhance customer support.
Chatbots for better customer service
Machine learning and AI can be used in several ways to improve customer support and thus provide more satisfaction.
Good customer support is about automating and eliminating “dumb contacts” and maximizing productive conversations pic.twitter.com/LfddvhJxAf
— Intercom (@intercom) May 26, 2017
Chatbots can easily identify and resolve issues by conversing with users in a natural manner. These help your business to offer superior, personalized customer support on a large scale.
“8 out of 10 consumers who have engaged with a chatbot, report it as an overall positive experience.”
Chatbots are the most accessible form of AI. They respond instantly to every user. Also, they use machine learning to collect users’ data, providing them with more satisfactory and personalized answers. This way, they are able to nudge a customer closer towards a conversion.
Sentiment analysis
When you are having a conversation with someone face-to-face, you can easily judge how they’re feeling based on their facial expressions, tone, and body language. However, for users reaching out to you online you don’t have the opportunity of face-to-face interaction.
When a customer sends you an email or text, it is imperative to know how they are feeling in order to respond properly. AI technology can analyze the user’s text and determine whether their sentiment is positive or negative. Your company can then address the problem raised and act accordingly.
Personalized emails win more customers
eCommerce personalization is more than just a clever marketing strategy. It simply saves time for your customers and contributes around 10% to online revenue for eCommerce businesses. This offers a win-win deal to both parties.
“Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates.”
People love the individual attention and feeling special. Giving your customers some attention via personalized emails always benefits in earning some leads.
Sending personalized emails will help to build trust in the mind of your audience. #emailmarketing
— Jason Hack (@jasonhack007) December 29, 2020
Through email personalization, you can target an email campaign to a specific group of subscribers by using the data you have about them. You can then strengthen the customer experience with your business by sending the right content to the right people at the right time.
Emails with personalized subject lines and text are 26% more likely to be opened by users.
The reason behind this is personalized emails consist of content that targets particular subscribers and are not available for every user. These can include their names, offers, and promotions (specifically curated for them), and general text to establish a better relationship.
Revolutionizing Marketing Strategies With Machine Learning (AI)
Today, machine learning is successfully taking contextual content, marketing automation, personalization, and sales forecasting to a new level of accuracy and speed. It has helped departments deliver more significant contributions to revenue growth while strengthening customer relationships in the process.
It is time for eCommerce companies to turn to machine learning for better optimization of their websites. Moreover, the outbreak of the pandemic has acted as a fuel for eCommerce stores. Revenue gains by companies like Amazon and Alibaba over the past few months stand as a testimony to the industry’s rapid growth during these times.
The challenge in front of eCommerce marketers is how to personalize the shopping experience on their website amidst so much turbulence.
In a time when users demand real-time services and customized experiences, businesses cannot depend on human pace. They need new and better ways to convert their hard work into smart work.
Using technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence helps you become omnipresent, deliver 24/7 support, and shopping experiences that satisfy the user’s demand.
