Note: This post has been guest authored by Atman Rathod, who is the Co-founder at CMARIX TechnoLabs. It is a leading web and mobile app development company with 13+ years of experience. He loves to write about technology, startups, entrepreneurship, and business. His creative abilities, academic track record, and leadership skills made him one of the key industry influencers as well.
As businesses irrespective of size and niche are increasingly depending on digital transactions, eCommerce and mobile commerce websites and apps are slowly becoming the principal avenue for driving sales and business conversion for many brands. Parallel to the growth of the eCommerce industry, we are also observing an enhanced influx of new technologies in helping brands and customers to interact in more innovative ways than ever before.
Recently there is a lot of talk about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in eCommerce stores. Almost all eCommerce CMS platforms are offering a broad array of sophisticated AI tools for web stores to use. Magento has been a front runner in this respect, leading and most innovation-driven CMS for web and mobile stores. This is why we are here to evaluate how AI is playing a game-changer role for Magento eCommerce development stores.
The Evolution Of eCommerce With New Technologies
If you think eCommerce as a groundbreaking concept just started within the last decade when we have experienced an outpouring of online stores and marketplaces, you are wrong. The history of eCommerce dates back to 40 years before when shopping was facilitated at the end of the 70’s decade through teleshopping and electronic data exchange in some cities. Since then the concept continued to evolve and soon it became intertwined with the evolution of internet technology in general. What we know today as online stores had formally started through websites in 1991. Amazon was the first online store to start selling products online and soon businesses around the world followed the example.
Since then eCommerce stores continued to evolve with increased sophistication, advanced features, better connectivity standard, and innovative design elements of the web. Soon, smartphones with their app marketplaces became the next harbor for eCommerce stores. In the last decade with the exponential growth of mobile shopper’s eCommerce mobile websites and mobile stores became the principal storefronts for most eCommerce businesses.
New technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) made it possible for businesses to deliver more real-life-like shopping and browsing experiences right on the mobile screens of users. Voice search and chatbots made customer service and product browsing easier than ever before. But nothing made a seismic shift in the shopping experience as big as the artificial intelligence (AI) technology. AI alone became a game-changer for the eCommerce shopping experience in many regards.
What Value AI Will Bring To eCommerce?
AI is credited to bring a lot of value for eCommerce stores of all niches and sizes. AI is now looked upon by businesses as an effective way to personalize their offerings and online shopping experience. Some of the key values brought by AI for the online shopping experience include the following.
Personalized Shopping Experience:
AI is helping online stores to feature personalized content and featured products as per the user preferences and previous buying as well as browsing behavior.
Prompt Customer Support:
AI is helping online stores to deliver prompt customer support by answering the queries, making suggestions, and guiding them through intelligent chatbots, search functions, and other AI-powered features.
Fast-paced And Precision-Driven Decision Making:
Thanks to AI online stores can make product recommendations based upon individual preferences and this helps in faster decision making for purchases.
Serving Deeper To The Customer Requirements:
While getting an air of the customer’s mood and preferences is not difficult for any online store. Getting deeper into the customer requirements and prescribing the most appropriate merchandise suitable to their contexts is something that AI-powered intelligent recommendation engines can do now.
Enhanced Data Security:
When it comes to online shopping and making payments, securing the financial data of the customers and privacy remains crucial to the reputation of an online store. AI coupled up with data analytics can easily detect attempts of fraudulent activities and data tampering.
Enhanced Customer Lifetime Value:
By helping customers get a more personalized shopping experience, effortless access to their required products, and optimum safety and security, AI actually boosts customer loyalty and lifetime value.
The Key eCommerce Features Brought By AI Technology
Artificial Intelligence has helped to incorporate some of the era-defining features to deliver a new and customer-centric shopping experience. Some of the key features created with AI for eCommerce stores include the following.
- Intelligent Chatbot
- Personalized Product Recommendation
- Voice Search and Speech Recognition
- Advanced Image Search
- Geo-location based intelligent promotion
- Personalized Notifications
- Personalized Email and Promotions
How Does It End Shopping Frustration?
From the above-mentioned elucidation, it is quite clear that the shopping experience thanks to AI can be less frustrating. As there will be more focus on customer preferences and contexts than ever before. Let us mention here some of the key ways AI can help minimize the frustration in online shopping for customers.
- Easier and prompt customer recognition based on biometric and voice input.
- Easier and faster product search functions based on customer preferences and buying behavior.
- Smooth and prompt customer support and interaction through chatbots.
- Getting notifications, marketing emails and messages that suit individual customer needs.
AI-Based Magento Applications And Their Value Proposition
AI-powered Magento applications and extensions provide eCommerce web stores and mobile apps with a lot of substantial value to enhance the shopping experience to the optimum. Let us explain by citing some of the most useful AI-powered Magento applications.
- Choice AI: It is a popular recommendation engine for Magento which is capable to make highly personalized suggestions for shoppers. The key features of the tool include recommendations based on preferred product features, visual search, automated email notification, etc.
- RichRelevance : This is another AI-based tool which is capable to bring together individualization with the business goals of the store. Highly individualized product recommendation is the key strength of this app.
- The Personalized Products Module: This is another useful Magento app to make highly personalized product recommendations. The tool also shows what other customers bought contextually.
- ai For Visual Recommendations: Vue.ai Visual Recommendation System for Fashion eCommerce is capable to show suggestive fashion products based on individual customer preferences.
- Search Spring site searches and navigation: SearchSpring is the subscription-based extension that helps to deliver highly context-aware and customer-intent based search results to customers using a Magento store.
Conclusion
AI is already proved to be a game-changer for way too many stores. In the time to come, we can expect an exponential rise in the number of AI-powered eCommerce applications for eCommerce stores of various niches and types.
