Ecommerce operations can significantly improve CX by focusing on the important areas of personalization, content creation, and analytics, all of which can be supported by AI.
To be successful in the e-commerce game today, companies need to be savvy in market research, technology tools, and have a solid business plan. But here's the secret: creating amazing customer experiences (CX) by building relationships, earning trust, and fostering brand loyalty. And guess what? AI is our trusted companion here, helping us personalize, create killer content, and analyze data to up our CX game.
Gartner recently reported that 38% of more than 2,500 executive leaders define customer experience as the most common key focus of AI investments. Ecommerce operations can significantly improve CX by focusing on the important areas of personalization , content creation and analytics , all of which can be supported by AI. In the following sections, we will take a closer look at the many ways AI can contribute in these areas.
Source: Gartner 2023. Survey of more than 2,500 executive leaders.
Expanding personalization to increase positive CX
One way to create positive CX is to personalize customer purchases. “Personalized shopping refers to the process of tailoring shopping experiences to each customer's individual preferences, needs, and behaviors,” according to an article published in Datafloq, a data and technology insights publication.
AI algorithms can analyze data from a variety of sources – including past purchasing and browsing activity, social media interactions, and demographic information – to identify patterns and predict buyer preferences. Customers can experience AI-powered personalization in several ways:
Personalized landing pages: Personalized based on past site relationships and purchasing habits. For example, a clothing retailer might offer a discount to first-time visitors. Or it can show what's new in jeans if the person has purchased this type of item in the past.
Personalized product descriptions: These can be tailored to reflect the buyer's preferences and habits. This personalization makes the customer feel understood, which contributes to greater loyalty and encourages additional purchases.
Personalized recommendations: They can be shown at critical moments in the customer's journey, such as when they arrive on the website or when they are about to finalize their purchase. For example, a “Did you forget?” list presented just before completing the order.
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Recently Viewed Items: This feature displays products that the person has viewed on previous visits. It's especially useful when shoppers regularly return to a website, so they can easily pick up where they left off during their last session. This feature provides a sense of continuity to customers, which builds trust in the brand.
“Similar to” items: For shoppers who like to compare similar items, the “similar to” feature is useful. For example, a makeup retailer might display products from the same brand as “similar” to what the customer purchased.
Dynamic content: Ecommerce retailers can then provide unique content for each customer segment. They can be highly specific, like middle-aged, middle-class men who live in Denver and regularly buy camping supplies. Offers will differ based on segments.
Dynamic pricing: Just like dynamic content, it can be tied to users' demographic information, purchases, and browsing history. It may also be based on other factors such as time of day, competitor prices, past sales data, inventory levels, or a combination thereof.
On-site targeting: On-site targeting personalizes content using dynamic elements like banners for location-specific ads and overlays for first-time or exit-intent visitors.
Virtual assistants: They help online shoppers by answering questions, assisting with orders, tracking packages and personalizing the shopping experience, increasing sales and profits. Watch the video to get details about these AI tools.
Spiceworks. AI tools can help ecommerce operators with the following tasks:
#1 Writing
AI writing tools can generate text for a wide variety of content types, including product descriptions, ad copy, blog posts, and video scripts. To prevent text from looking like it was “written by a robot,” users can set the tone, target audience, reading level, and more. Marketers can also use AI-generated text as a starting point and add their own polish to it.
#2 Edition
AI-powered editing tools can provide suggestions to improve grammar, readability, check for plagiarism, and adhere to brand parameters. Having these tasks performed by AI-based tools can help organizations reduce the number of content developers needed.
#3 Reuse
These tools can also help content developers repurpose content, such as creating an article based on video content or writing a blog post based on part of an e-book. This repurposing helps ecommerce operators optimize the effort they put into each piece of content.
#4: SEO Research and Keyword Generation
AI tools can help perform some of the most tedious and time-consuming content development tasks, like SEO research and keyword generation. They can also provide content parameters such as ideal word count and questions to include. This use of AI is just another way for companies to save money on the cost of human labor.
#5 Image generation
Some AI tools are specifically designed to generate images that can be used to accompany text in social media posts, articles, and more. This feature is useful because image-based content is more likely to generate engagement than text-only content.
#6 Chatbot text generation
AI tools can help ecommerce operators create guided conversations between chatbots and customers, give automatic Q&A responses, develop natural language response dialogs based on customer questions, and add images, videos, GIFs, buttons and other visual elements.
#7 General Search
AI tools like ChatGPT can help with the research needed to provide basic information about content. Users can simply ask questions and get conversational responses based on the information they have been trained on.
#8: Content Strategy
For ecommerce services that don't know where to start with content development, AI tools are available to create a strategy. It may include keywords to use, types of content to develop, and a schedule for posting content.
#8 Project Management and Planning
Finally, AI tools are available to manage plans and check the effectiveness of keyword-based content. This type of tool can be even more essential as the others allow content teams to increase the volume of development, requiring greater organization.
E-commerce operators must be careful to avoid some of the pitfalls of AI tools for generating content, such as inaccurate information. However, they will find many benefits in using AI tools to help generate promotional content, as follows.
Leveraging data analytics to increase efficiency and increase success
A third way ecommerce operators can improve CX with AI is through data analysis. This process can provide valuable information, including in the following areas.
Price comparisons
In e-commerce, pricing is critical to optimizing revenue and profits, competing with rival companies, and creating strong customer relationships. AI can take over this research and help ecommerce operations optimize pricing. It can also change prices sitewide if needed and help create dynamic pricing as described above.
Logistics
Some of the biggest causes of customer dissatisfaction are delivery issues, many of which are caused by problems with logistics systems. AI-based data analysis can help prevent some of these issues by determining product availability, delivery location, and the most efficient delivery routes.
Sales forecast
By using historical data in addition to real-time factors such as demographics, weather, and sales performance of similar products, AI-based systems can predict sales. This information is invaluable for ecommerce operators who want to plan ahead for things like spending and restocking.
Fraud detection
The more business a website does, the more likely it is to become a victim of fraud. AI can monitor transactions and identify those that appear suspicious. For example, a user may place multiple orders over a brief period of time or use a false shipping address. AI systems can alert operators to irregular activities.
Inventory
A recent Forbes BRAND VOICE article states, “Retailers can leverage AI-powered inventory management systems to improve inventory control, thereby reducing instances of overstocks and out-of-stocks and increasing customer satisfaction. ” These solutions can help ecommerce businesses be highly efficient in their inventory spend.
Competitor Activity
Data analytics can be used to assess competitor activity and help businesses make smarter decisions. This analysis includes collecting information from your websites and online assets.
Consumer trends
AI tools can aggregate data from social media, online forums, news outlets, and other sources to determine popular topics. They can analyze information from customer reviews, social media posts, blogs and other sources to learn about emerging consumer preferences. They can even segment this information into purchasing habits, demographics, and other information.
Customer engagement
Ecommerce companies with physical stores can analyze customer engagement across all POS channels. The information collected may be used to provide suggested product recommendations, call-to-action messages, and other promotional content to improve customer satisfaction and reduce cart abandonment.
Potential for unprecedented success
The introduction of AI into eCommerce operations has created the potential for unprecedented success. One of the most useful aspects of AI solutions in e-commerce is their ability to upgrade customers' shopping experience, which contributes to greater loyalty and increased sales. Additionally, the ability to analyze vast amounts of data in real time allows operational leaders to identify emerging trends and pivot, ensuring their companies remain relevant and in demand.
In today's competitive eCommerce landscape, staying one step ahead is essential to success, and AI is driving this capability. As AI continues to evolve, its potential to transform e-commerce will increase even further. AI is becoming the foundation upon which all eCommerce operations are built. Ecommerce companies that take full advantage of AI capabilities will continue to survive and thrive with efficient operations, satisfied customers, and better financial results.
