AI in eCommerce: 5 Ways AI Will Transform eCommerce in 2022​

AI in eCommerce: 5 Ways AI Will Transform eCommerce in 2022

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t a new technology by any means. In the last decade, we have seen AI make an impact on all industries including but not limited to telecommunication, education, healthcare, entertainment, retail, transport, hospitality, etc. We’ve seen AI embed itself in many aspects of our daily lives. From the apps on our phones to advanced security checks at airports, AI is almost everywhere.

Following the trend, eCommerce is also quickly moving towards wider adoption of AI. We’ve already seen many interesting applications of AI in eCommerce. But the future seems even more exciting. It will transform the way we sell and buy things online. This will not only result in improved speed but will also offer an improved customer experience.

In this article, let’s discuss 5 ways AI will transform eCommerce in 2022.

AI in eCommerce - Key statistics

Let’s look at a few key statistics to demonstrate the growing importance of AI in eCommerce –

  • The worldwide market for AI is huge. It’s expected to reach a size of over half a trillion USD by 2024.

  • The market size for AI is expected to expand at a CAGR of 40.2% from 2021 to 2028.

  • The number of businesses that use AI grew by 270% from 2015 to 2019.

  • About 80% of retail executives expect that their businesses will adopt AI automation by 2025.

  • The retail industry will relinquish almost 95% of customer communications (online + telephonic) to AI chatbots by 2025.

Benefits of using AI in eCommerce

Benefits of AI in eCommerce

Some of the key benefits of using AI in eCommerce include –

  • AI helps eCommerce businesses benefit from targeted marketing and advertising. Personalization is key these days and AI can help businesses offer that. It also helps brands stand out from their competitors. AI enables deep personalization like it was never possible before.

  • The targeted outreach and marketing can enable businesses to better retain customers.

  • AI enables seamless automation so the majority of tasks can be accomplished with as little human intervention as possible. This can be tasks like scheduling emails, handling customer interactions, offering recommendations, etc.

  • AI also improves the sales process by gathering data about customers and using the insights to streamline the sales process. AI chatbots can engage with customers to move them through the sales funnel.

5 ways AI will transform eCommerce in 2022

5 ways AI will transform eCommerce in 2022​

Many eCommerce businesses are already using AI in various forms to better run their operations. Let’s look at some novel ways companies will look at using AI in 2022.

1. AI-powered copywriting

The availability of powerful language models like GPT-3 has revolutionized the way brands create their sales copy. AI-powered copywriting is a trend that’s likely to pick up further steam in 2022 when even more advanced models like GPT-4 will be released.

AI writing tools like Grammarly are already quite popular. In 2022, we’ll see brands generate marketing copy within seconds.

As opposed to hiring copywriters or ad agencies, eCommerce brands will simply use software and writing bots to write headlines, product descriptions, digital ad copy, etc. While such tools require manual editing these days, they will become more advanced and autonomous in the future.

2. Personalized services

One of the key applications of AI involves offering personalized experiences which will be given a further boost as the technology evolves in 2022. We’ll see AI get better at offering accurate product recommendations as well as more personalized advertising.

AI algorithms can sift through huge datasets and retrieve actionable insights about customers. Companies will start using these insights more and more to better predict customer needs.

As AI becomes more adaptive to human thought patterns, it can offer users keyword hints when customers type certain names incorrectly. Along with adaptive search, AI can also make product recommendations to customers, suggesting items that they can buy together or sharing product-relevant information. This will help customers quickly get the things they need and reduce their search time.

Some key personalized services that eCommerce brands will look to utilize include website personalization, recommendation systems, and personalized search.

AI will also help brands offer a personalized customer approach by deeply analyzing customer behavior, their experience, and how they interact with the website. It’ll then be able to predict what users would want to see and buy.

AI will also help retailers better use big data to design customized sales strategies based on customer behavior.

3. Smarter virtual assistants and chatbots

Chatbots and virtual assistants do a good job of providing customers immediate assistance as well as 24/7 support. As per Juniper Research, the projected value of chatbot eCommerce transactions is expected to reach $112 billion by 2023.

In 2022, we are going to see more advanced and intuitive chatbots capable of –

  • Interpreting voice-based interactions using natural language processing (NLP) and, in turn, providing personalized offers to customers
  • Using deeper insights to address customer needs
  • Self-learning new things and improving over time to better address customer needs
  • Offering personalized and targeted offers to customers
  • Giving users detailed answers on how to solve specific issues
  • Better integrating with modern-day virtual assistants like Siri, Google, Alexa to offer an easier shopping experience to customers

4. Tackle fake reviews

For as many as 90% of online buyers, online reviews influence their buying decisions. In that case, it’s important to have positive reviews to make a good impression about a product.

Unfortunately, fake reviews are quickly becoming a growing issue for online retailers and eCommerce stores. Competitors sometimes use bots to publish fake reviews that might negatively impact a brand’s business.

AI can help manage this problem by filtering and blocking fake reviews. In 2022, we’ll see more and more eCommerce stores use AI to fight astroturfing. AI can verify genuine reviews and combat fake ratings and reviews. AI can also filter out reviews that have been marked helpful by other users.

5. Sales forecasting

The predictive analytics capabilities offered by AI can reshape the context of inventory management and sales forecasting. Since storage facilities don’t always have the space to keep everything in stock, it’s important to prioritize the products by keeping the inventory up to date.

AI can quickly anticipate changes in demand, conduct preventive maintenance, and automate certain processes. In 2022, we’ll see many eCommerce businesses around the globe use AI to predict future sales based on consumer patterns.

Conclusion

eCommerce brands are increasingly looking at adopting AI to improve customer experience as well as their internal processes. We’ve only talked about a few popular applications of AI that we might see in 2022. But there are many other ways AI can be utilized.

Moreover, as the market for AI in eCommerce continues to grow, brands not investing in its potential will be left behind.

Have you invested in AI yet?

Check out Dresma’s blogs for more such insightful articles.

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