Artificial Intelligence & E-commerce: 5 Practical Applications

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a very useful tool that your online store uses to offer customers a better shopping experience.

With all the recent news surrounding ChatGPT, it's clear to see how rapidly the technology has developed over the past few years.

However, AI-supported solutions have been used in e-commerce for some time.

In this article, we'll look at 5 different ways artificial intelligence can be applied to online businesses to help you increase efficiency, save costs, and achieve your goals.

What is artificial intelligence?

Aritificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that deals with the development of intelligent machines and machine learning.

Ideally, AI should imitate (or surpass) human behavior in order to:

recognise and interpret language and patterns
be able to learn
plan tasks and solve problems

Recently, the development of artificial intelligence has made rapid progress.

Above all, the release of ChatGPT has contributed to the topic being discussed more and more in the general public.

By combining machine learning and pattern recognition, artificial intelligence can support your daily business by assisting (or taking over) complex decision-making processes and suggesting appropriate actions. This can save time and increase efficiency.

shutterstock/Besjunior

How is artificial intelligence already being used?

Artificial intelligence already makes our everyday lives easier in numerous areas. Probably the most commonly used AI is Google.

Artificial intelligence has long been part of many search engine algorithms. Social media platforms use AI to monitor content as well.

But streaming services such as Netflix also use artificial intelligence to recommend suitable films and shows to users based on their viewing history and other data.

AI solutions are versatile and are also used in medicine, transportation, retail, finance, and the energy industry.

5 practical applications of artificial intelligence in e-commerce

Some of these technologies have been around for a while and some are quite new. Either way, we'll introduce you to five ways your online business can utilise artificial intelligence to boost performance and productivity.

1. Personalisation of digital advertising campaigns and messages

One of the most important areas to apply AI in online shops is customer personalisation. With AI-based solutions, you can optimise the shopping experience of your customers.

By enriching customer data, artificial intelligence can create content and make personalised product recommendations based on an individual's past purchase and search behaviour.

In this way, you can also encourage your customers to make impulse purchases and realise more additional sales. These techniques can be applied to your website, but also as part of your automated email marketing campaigns.

2. Answering customer reviews with artificial intelligence

Replying to the customer reviews you receive, both positive and negative, is important. By doing so, you stay engaged with your customers and you give potential customers insights into your service. However, it can often take a lot of time (and patience).

AI solutions can help you increase your effectiveness with this task while reducing costs by allowing your employees to focus on other tasks.

Trusted Shops' newest tool, the Smart Review Assistant, allows businesses to respond to customer feedback quickly and efficiently by using artificial intelligence to formulate unique and relevant responses to reviews of any kind.

The tool also summarises particularly long reviews to give a better overview of the content (and what points it will respond to) with the Intelligent Summary function.

Creating a response is as simple as clicking "Create reply".

If you want to learn more about the Smart Review Assistant, click on the link below...

3. Chatbots: Efficient 24/7 customer support

Customer service is another area that is important to your brand image and can be improved with the help of artificial intelligence.

Sure, you still want humans available to interact with your customers and help resolve issues. However, during off-peak hours, your chatbot can be a great help as well by answering some of the typical questions that customers might have.

By being available 24/7, this could also free up your customer service team to focus on the more difficult issues while the chatbot takes care of more simple tasks and questions.

shutterstock/charles taylor

4. Generate content: create texts with AI

Creating quality content is one of the most important building blocks in any SEO strategy.

It's not for nothing that Google attaches great importance to helpful, trustworthy and user-oriented content in its Search Essentials.

AI text generators such as ChatGPT, Neuroflash, Jasper or Writesonic can support you in researching and creating SEO-optimised texts or product descriptions.

Important 💡

We recommend not just blindly copying AI texts. It's always a good idea to let a human eye look over the content and adjust and rephrase texts accordingly.

You should think of the AI texts as more of an inspiration and use them as a kind of guide for the content you want to publish.

5. Conversion optimisation using artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be used in so many ways with regards to conversion optimisation.

Among other things, AI can carry out automated A/B tests and derive appropriate recommendations for the next steps.

This could, for example, allow you to adjust your shop's navigation and design. Alternatively, you can test CTA buttons as well as many other things.

However, artificial intelligence can also suggest personalised product recommendations during the checkout and help increase your site's conversion rate - think upselling and cross-selling.

However, these are just a few examples. As you can see, there are no real limits to the possible uses of artificial intelligence.

Conclusion: AI and the future of e-commerce

AI is becoming more and more important in the e-commerce sector and is playing an increasingly larger role with every passing day.

The technology enables businesses to offer their customers an even better user experience. Chatbots can answer customer inquiries in real time and systems can create and help optimise ad campaigns.

AI can also help manage and respond to customer reviews.

Solutions based on artificial intelligence are the future of e-commerce and will revolutionise the way online shops work in the years to come.

This article was originally published and translated from our German blog: Künstliche Intelligenz: 5 Einsatzgebiete von KI in Online-Shops

05/04/23