Benefits Of AI In Online Retail Businesses

The online retail sector is booming at an impressive pace. Back in 2019, retail ecommerce sales were subjected to around 3.53 trillion US dollars, the figure is expected to reach a gigantic of $4.5 trillion in 2021.

So, what do you think is the driving factor towards the unprecedented growth of ecommerce industry? Among several other state-of-the-art technologies, Artificial Intelligence is at the top of the list that seems to play a crucial role. Thanks to the rapid development and deployment of machine learning, reinforcement learning, and computer vision, that have redefined the whole way of conducting online businesses.

Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2023

Take a quick look at the thriving ecommerce sector globally from 2014 to 2023.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20retail%20e%2Dcommerce,most%20popular%20online%20activities%20worldwide.

Looks impressive? With this surge in sales figures, it’s no wonder that AI is going to dominate the whole ecommerce sector soon. Understating the power of AI in the online retail sector, numerous popular online stores owners have already started to implement this innovative technology into their business system.

5 Benefits of AI in the Online Retail Businesses

Since a seamless customer experience is the heart of any successful retail strategy, here is what artificial intelligence comes to show its miracles. Though, the technology seems unattainable for small ecommerce businesses, leveraging it is a lot more accessible than it was in the past.

Here are five major benefits of AI in the online retail business. Let’s get started:

1. Enhanced Product Searching with AI

Product searching is one of the most critical features on any ecommerce platform. Customers normally get disappointed seeing the irrelevant product search results. The AI software offers a competitive edge to ecommerce businesses of all sizes and scales when it comes to product searching. The product searching feature uses the combination of computer vision and natural language processing (NLP), to deliver better search results through keywords and images. Also, AI offers the visual search capability that allows shoppers to find their matching products easily.

2.  Improve Recommendations for Customers

Another great benefit of AI in online retail businesses is improved recommendations for customers. With AI, shopping brands can predict and understand their customers’ behavior intelligently and efficiently. Starbucks is the perfect example of AI in the retail business, where the data analyst analyses the data that AI has gathered, to deliver improved customer suggestions. AI gathers customers' data based on their search history, preferences, choices, and third-party data, etc.

3. Tasks Efficiency with Automation

With the growing size of your ecommerce business, the number of repetitive tasks also increases. AI automation helps to tackle this issue by automatically perform the repetitive jobs and simplifying the front end and back end tasks. Everything from posting new products on various channels, to scheduling the sales, applying the best discount offers to loyal customers, and more is done with the help of AI. The automation with AI, not only allows the businesses to perform the business tasks efficiently but also boost the overall productivity of a company.

4. Chatbots and Visual Assistants

In today’s era of conversational ecommerce, the use of AI in the form of chatbots is just one example to increase conversion rates and boost sales. Artificial intelligence is a lot more than that. The chatbots and virtual assistants, not only help to automate the order process but also a cost-effective way to track user behavior, collect valuable data, and provide 24/7 customer service. Research from Juniper has revealed that chatbots can save around $8 billion yearly by 2022. By incorporating AI in ecommerce websites, store owners can increase their conversion rates to a noticeable extent. So, there is no excuse to neglect to incorporate AI in your ecommerce business.

5. Dynamic Pricing

No matter if you are running a store with 100 or 1000 products, changing the prices of items manually is a real headache. The dynamic pricing feature of AI allows the data analysts to adjust the inventory prices based on various data points. Your customers’ behavior, inventory, market conditions all can be sued to automatically set the product prices in real-time.

Final Thoughts

To sum up the above benefits of AI in online retail businesses, it is clear that this powerful and user-friendly technology has begun to impact the ecommerce world significantly. The companies who want to stay competitive must adapt and invest in this technology to provide a seamless shopping experience and reap its real benefits.