The Growth of Artificial Intelligence is Taking E-Commerce​ to the Next Level

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While it began with Jeff Bezos selling books out of his garage, Amazon has grown to one of the most visited sites out there, and has transformed Jeff Bezos into not only the richest person in the world, but one of the richest in human history.

In addition to Amazon, there are hundreds of other E-commerce sites and platforms out there selling a variety of different products. Also, there are many sites and/or agencies that sell services that used to be sold only in person — click here to see an example. While they won’t all hit it big like Amazon did, E-commerce sites can be very profitable and lucrative. However, there is also a ton of work that goes into making them successful.

Thankfully, advancements and growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry has made it a lot simpler, more effective, and more efficient to run an E-commerce website or business. There are a ton of different ways in which these advancements in artificial intelligence are taking E-commerce to the next level, and this article will look at a few of them.

Virtual Assistants to Help With Purchases

While many think AI is some high-powered technology that is expensive to use and purchase, that isn’t the case. For example, if you use Siri, a Google Home or Alexa, you have used A.I and it likely didn’t cost you much and is extremely easy to set up. AI has made massive strides in recent years, and a lot of it has to do with virtual assistants.

These little programs and/or devices are extremely helpful in a variety of different areas in your life, and it just so happens that they can be great in the E-commerce realm. AI can help to create “buying assistants” for customers. These assistants will be able to help alert you when things you are interested in go on sale. This simply makes your shopping more effective and easy.

While they aren’t perfect in the modern day, they are likely going to improve leaps and bounds in the following years, and could potentially be able to make purchases on your behalf if you provide it the necessary data to make that decision automatically.

Analyzing Large Amounts of Data

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If you are running your own e-commerce website and selling products, you know how many things you need to do. In addition to doing inventory, marketing, sending products and more, there are also mountains of data for you to go over. This data includes everything from customer behavior, demand, trends, shopping habits and more.

While some operators will choose to analyze all of that data manually, that can be extremely time consuming and it very easy to make mistakes. However, AI can make it much easier to analyze important data, and provide correlation between the different types of data.

Improved Chat Functionality

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One of the most important parts of an E-commerce store is their customer service. In the past, phone and/or email customer service was the standard, but the world has advanced and if those are the only two options you provide, you are missing out on the most important one, a live chat.

However, having someone work as a customer service rep and answering chat inquiries every day, Chatbots can be a viable solution. These are robots or programs that are used to simulate human conversation and can save site owners a lot of money, while still delivering a chat function to their customers.

Creating a More Personal Experience For Customers

While online shopping has taken off in a huge way in recent years, there are still those who prefer to shop in physical stores. One of the biggest reasons for this is because they still appreciate the “personal” experience of shopping in person. However, in the modern day, this is no longer the case, as online shopping has gotten much better in terms of the experience they provide.

In particular, AI has helped the create a more customized experience. This ensures that people will be shown deals or products that they are interested in, analyze what they have done and thus predict what they will do in the future. Without a solid customer experience and way to make each transaction feel personal, an e-commerce site store will likely struggle a little.

In conclusion, it is clear to see that the growth of AI over the last few years has had a measurable impact on improving the e-commerce experience for everyone involved. There have been several examples of big companies using AI to become more efficient and stay with the times, and don’t be shocked to see more in the future.