Few industries are as competitive as ecommerce. Not only are online retailers competing with other online stores and brick-and-mortar locations, but also the overall noise that is the Internet. We live in a world where consumer attention span is getting shorter and shorter: 40 percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load, and the average shopping cart is abandoned more than 68 percent of the time. I’m hard pressed to find an ecommerce site that is not constantly scrambling to engage more and drive more sales.
Technology is finally helping with those efforts in a big way. Artificial intelligence (AI), which has demonstrated its value in industries like marketing, healthcare and finance, is now making a splash in online commerce.
Here are three ways AI will impact ecommerce in the coming years:
Visual search.
Shoppers, say goodbye to impulse control. Software platforms that drive ecommerce websites are creating visual search capabilities which allow consumers to upload an image and find similar/complementary products. The visual search capabilities, particularly via mobile, “reads” the item for clues -- color, shape, size, fabric and brand. This helps consumers to find exactly what they are looking for right away.
Offline to online worlds merge.
These visual search capabilities can now create ties from online to offline like never before. As retailers redefine the way consumers engage with their brand, retail of the future will have more information about shoppers to improve their customer service, ultimately to create the opportunity to sell more items. The offline to online experience requires minimal steps to shop and purchase, providing a sense of autonomy to the consumer.
Personalization.
Personalization in ecommerce is nothing new. But thanks to emerging AI technologies, online brands of all sizes will have increasing access to tools laser-focused on personalization.
Many retailers currently use collaborative filtering to provide customers with recommendations. These collaborative filters base their results on most viewed history, best sellers, evergreen trends and other general parameters. But collaborative filters are limited because they only gather data from one channel, be that the online store, the brick and mortar store, or the mobile application. AI brings a seamless customer experience across all of those channels.
Virtual personal shopper.
Brands are creating more interactive shopping experiences to provide product recommendations based on natural conversation and cognitive data derived from AI. The intelligent shopping assistants are faster than humans, can analyze huge quantities of data in minimal time, and perform human-like interactions that have ‘personalities’ designed to reflect that brand’s image. Virtual personal shoppers will become an entertaining and engaging point of contact for users.
Your audience is open to AI.
A study from the research firm J. Walter Thompson, reveals that consumers are interested in how AI will be used in retail: 70 percent of US millennials say they would appreciate a brand or retailer using AI technology to show more interesting products. And 72 percent believe that as the technology develops, brands using AI will be able to accurately predict what they want.
Courtesy of CTPost
