Artificial Intelligence and Online Shopping

A customer visits a website, selects a product and makes an online payment. Nice and simple in theory.

But even before considering AI applications in eCommerce ecommerce sites now are complex beasts. Buyers have to find and filter to get to the products they want. Prices change sometimes on a daily basis and getting good advise about a purchase buyers read review from other buyers.

AI can be used to help customers improve the buying experience, retailers to improve conversions and optimize stock for future sales demand.

AI to increase conversions and improve buying experience

Walk into a store (A physical store) and your expect to deal with a person who will help you make your purchase. You will expect that person to have a good knowledge about the products available in the store. So if you ask a question the sales assistant should be able to answer.

Shopping online is different because the buyer needs to either have faith the product ordered will do all that he/she wants or has spend hours researching them elsewhere.

With AI it is possible to have a virtual sales assistant instantly available for every buyer on your ecommerce website. Sometimes called chatbots these personal virtual assistants can interact and answer questions. The chatbot could also be aware of other products the buyer has purchased and highlight if they will work with each other.

A chatbot will learn about all products available for sale from the website and as it answers more questions it will improve its learning and quality of its answers.

AI can also be used to analyze a buyers past purchases and make ideal recommendations for new products or services that are now available. For example if a customer has in the past been buying videos that include a movie star and that star is in a new movie then the AI application can make a new suggestion.