Artificial intelligence is here — and fully impacting various industries, left and right. While there’s ample reason many people are a bit worried about AI, especially where the job market is concerned, there are also many benefits to utilizing AI that should be analyzed further.
Slowly but surely, AI has been transforming e-commerce for the past few years. But in the last year or so, AI has taken some great leaps — and we can see how it has completely changed the game.
For example, artificial intelligence can greatly help e-commerce businesses improve their sales, reach, conversions, you name it! This article explores how AI is transforming e-commerce for the better.
However, we also explore what e-commerce businesses can do to adapt to the times alongside AI — and how certain VPN uses can even help keep malicious actors with AI at bay.
1. Customer Service
You probably already know this one. After all, AI chatbots have been a website feature for a bit now. But thanks to advances in AI, e-commerce customer service is better than ever!
AI chatbots can be free for customers to use on an online website 24/7. Obviously, satisfactory customer service is vital for many businesses, whether online or offline. Having a 24/7 chatbox to help customers is, therefore, highly beneficial. If these AI chatbots cannot solve an issue for a customer, a live agent can be called in to assist!
However, chatbots can also give personalized recommendations and advice to customers, working virtual assistants when needed. As many customers enjoy using an AI chatbot when shopping online, this is one AI feature every e-commerce business should look into, at the very least!
2. Personalization
AI is best when it does something regular people can’t do successfully, easily or quickly. For example, no regular worker can analyze a customer’s buying habits and personalize their online shopping experience in seconds. But AI can!
That’s why AI can be so essential to e-commerce businesses. If AI personalizes a customer’s online shopping experience based on their previous habits, buys, or searches, then there is a much higher chance this person will actually buy something.
Online shops always want to convert regular website visitors into customers. With AI personalizing their site based on each individual experience, this can very easily be done!
3. Dynamic Pricing
Analyzing how much a product should be priced can be a bit stressful for any online business owner. Taking into consideration demand and supply takes time and effort. It’s not necessarily something that can be done on a whim daily.
But with AI, all the hard work is done for you. Advanced AI systems can track your website’s supply and demand, thereby using dynamic pricing to charge more for items that are selling fast.
But that’s not all! AI can also check out your competitors that are selling similar objects. Let’s say your main competitor has run out of stock of a similar item. Well, AI can alert you on this — and then use dynamic pricing to change your similar product’s pricing to best encourage profits!
As the main goal of any e-commerce business is to increase profits, utilizing AI dynamic pricing can be a game changer for any business.
4. Copywriting
Language-based AIs have taken giant leaps recently. So, why not use AI for all the copywriting for your online business?
AI can write any copy you need, which can help save time, money, and energy. For example, if you want to upload brand-new products to your website but don’t have the time to write high-quality product descriptions (or hire someone to do this), you can have an AI get the job done.
In fact, Amazon has already started slowly rolling out an AI tool to help sellers write product descriptions. Though you’ll likely need to continue editing and proofreading the AI’s language, these tools can still be a great way to get the ball rolling when it comes to copywriting!
5. Searches
A customer goes to an online shop with a specific dress in mind that they desperately want to buy. However, no matter how many different searches they type in, nothing comes close to what they want, even though the shop does have what they’re looking for. Annoyed by their lack of results, customers go elsewhere to find what they want.
Obviously, no e-commerce business wants this to happen. Unfortunately, it happens all too often. But with AI tools dedicated to helping customers when using a website’s search bar, this doesn’t need to ever happen again!
AI can greatly help customers search when shopping online. Whether by understanding misspelled words, reading between the lines, or using the customer’s previous search habits, AI can point a customer in the right direction than any other tool.
Even better, some AI tools offer customers the option of searching by using a visual picture. So, if the customer we talked about before uploaded a photo from Pinterest of the dress they want, AI can immediately find the closest options on that specific online store!
Clearly, this could help convert casual site visitors to customers in no time.
6. Inventory Management
Many online shops struggle with inventory management, leading to lost sales. With AI, businesses can stay on top of their inventory and better understand what to quickly restock — and what to hold off on restocking for a bit.
AI can also stay on top of an e-commerce shop’s total stock, understanding what’s selling fast and alerting companies when something is amiss with their stock, thanks to high demand. Instead of worrying about inventory yourself, AI can be one step ahead and always sound alarms when things might be sold out soon!
This can also greatly help business owners when it comes to storing their inventory. After all, you have to store the products somewhere before they’re sold! As storing inventory takes up space — and costs money — there’s no point in restocking items that aren’t in demand. AI can analyze this for you!
AI robots have also begun to revolutionize warehouse practices. If you have a large inventory and are looking to invest in a quicker turnaround, these robots can stock products and retrieve items that have been sold and need to be shipped!
How to Adapt Your E-Commerce Business With Artificial Intelligence
It’s easy to see the many ways AI can benefit e-commerce in a huge, transformative way. Utilizing some of those AI techniques and tools talked about above could help you grow your e-commerce business.
However, other things must be considered regarding how an e-commerce business must adapt to changing artificial intelligence. One of the worst ways AI could harm e-commerce is through AI hackers.
E-commerce businesses know just how detrimental hackers can be. Bad actors have long hacked into e-commerce shops to steal sensitive customer information, such as payment or card details. While many online shops have high-quality security in place, sometimes, this isn’t enough to keep malicious hackers at bay.
If hackers use AI tools to better hack into e-commerce shops, this can have a terrible effect on business owners and customers. Intelligence agencies worldwide have already sounded the alarm about how AI is being used to hack!
So, to keep cyber threats at bay, all e-commerce businesses should know how AI can be used harmfully. Luckily, there are many ways to keep this from happening.
Specifically, many VPN uses can help keep AI hackers at bay. VPN can help e-commerce businesses by:
- Stopping clicks on malicious links set up by bad actors using AI
- Protecting from AI hackers getting sensitive browsing information
- Avoiding harmful ads created with AI
There are many ways VPN can help keep malicious hackers using AI away from e-commerce businesses, other than what’s listed above. If you want to keep your shop — and your customers — from having a bad experience with a hacker, using a VPN is a real solution.
Conclusion
AI can seem a bit scary if you’re not well-versed in it. But it doesn’t have to be! E-commerce businesses can greatly benefit from utilizing a few different AI tools. After all, the main goal is to encourage website visitors to become dedicated customers. With these AI techniques and tools that we’ve listed above, you can do this easily!
Of course, not all aspects of AI are good — and if you can use AI, then bad actors can, too! Luckily, a VPN can keep hackers from successfully stealing information!
AI isn’t just changing the game for e-commerce. It already has. So, why not adapt alongside it?
