By: Muhammad Ali
Gone are the days when having an online presence was enough for ecommerce brands to attract customers and generate leads. To survive in this highly fierce world, ecommerce brands have to stay innovative and delight their customers in more meaningful ways. Harnessing the power of AI can help ecommerce businesses to stay ahead of the curve and keep customers to super engaged and buy more and more products.
Artificial intelligence continues to transform the ecommerce industry – from offering virtual buying assistants to creating a highly personalized shopping experience. In fact, artificial intelligence is taking the online shopping experience for both business owners and customers to a whole new level.
AI is creating an innovative system for online stores to operate and provide out-of-the-box services to their customers. It provides smart and effective ways to analyze big data and help online stores engage with their customers in a way that creates satisfactory customer experiences.
According to Business Insider, it is projected that by the end of 2020, around 85% of customer interactions will be handled automatically – without any human involvement.
The rapid advancement of AI in the online shopping sector is gradually transforming the way users buy, how they buy and from where they buy. There are many ecommerce brands who are already leveraging AI to better understand their customers, create AI-powered interactions with customers, generate more leads, provide delightful customer experience and generate more revenue.
Here are a few examples of successful ecommerce brands that are transforming the buying behavior of online shoppers by leveraging artificial intelligence and big data.
1. Walmart
This retail giant always tries to implement the latest technologies to meet its customer’s needs and optimize its business operations. Walmart is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide excellent customer service. The discount giant also introduced facial recognition software that is capable of recognizing the level of frustration of customers at the time of checkout and triggering an alert for a customer support representative to talk to the unhappy customer.
2. Sephora
One of the famous beauty retailers Sephora is tapping into the power of augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence and RFID technology in order to provide cutting-edge solutions and excellent customer services to its customers. Sephora offers tech-based features to its valued customers in order to provide them with a highly personalized shopping experience. They let their users try on their beauty products or sampling a fragrance through AR and touchscreen, scented air.
Sephora virtual artist allows customers to try on different products such as eyeshadows, lipsticks, foundations, and a large variety of other makeup products. In addition, it helps shoppers to achieve different beauty looks by providing useful tutorials. The amazing feature Color Match allows shoppers to find the right shade that best suits their skin tone by simply uploading their photos.
3. Mintigo
AI enables ecommerce brands to use a predictive marketing platform to address business challenges. Mintigo is the pioneer of predictive marketing that provides AI-based solutions for marketing, sales and CRM systems. Mintigo launched a leading-edge AI technology platform that is tailored to help businesses to improve their sales outcomes and engage customers in a more impactful way.
By using Mintigo software, Getty images has successfully generated more leads by collecting the data that shows which brands are using images from Getty’s competitors on their websites. This way Getty can identify prospects, allowing its sales team to generate more leads. Without leveraging AI and machine learning, Getty would not be able to reach their potential customers.
4. Lowe’s
One of the famous home improvement retailers Lowe’s has introduced the next generation robot LoweBot to help its customers in choosing home improvement products. The autonomous robot greets customers, guides them to find items, provides relevant product information as well as assist employees with inventory management. The robot uses a 3D scanner to detect customers as they into stores and guide them to items they want using smart laser sensors. This helps retailer brand to fee up their experienced workers to work in meaningful tasks such as engage with their customers and provide them a more personalized service.
5. Alibaba
Alibaba, China’s largest ecommerce giant, is using artificial intelligence technology and big data to track customers wherever they are shopping. With their new application, they can track their shoppers no matter where they are shopping, on phone, in a physical store, or via the smart speaker. They can figure out what triggers them to buy. Shoppers can place an online order from Alibaba-backed grocery store HEMA. They can shop in a physical store, scan barcodes, pay using the app and get free delivery for physical purchases. This helps ecommerce giant to capture the offline shopping behavior using the mobile app, which can be analyzed to get a clear picture of customer behavior.
Concluding Thoughts
By chaptalizing on AI-powered tools such as virtual assistants or chatbots, your online store can successfully meet the ever-increasing needs of digitally-savvy buyers. Whether you own a web design agency or an eCommerce store, Artificial intelligence is something which can help buyers to make better decisions by identifying their search patterns, product preferences and buying behavior while providing them with the right products. This helps brands create a more delightful customer experience which will eventually help you create a positive brand image and a massive loyal fan base.
So, are you ready to implement AI technology into your ecommerce site to enhance customer experience?
About Writer: Mohammad Ali is an experienced digital marketer and a search engine marketing specialist. Currently, he’s associated with Branex, as senior digital marketer and brand strategist.
