[Artificial intelligence and e-commerce] What it is and how it can help increase sales in your online store

Abigail Bosze

Content Writer

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There’s always been a bit of mystery and futuristic aura surrounding the idea of artificial intelligence. The truth is, this concept has been confined to sci-fi movies until not long ago.

Well, the future is now!

And even though it sounds like something that could only be implemented by tech giants the likes of Amazon and Facebook, it’s more common than you think.

As a matter of fact, artificial intelligence plays a fundamental role in improving the user experience (and, therefore, sales) of any online shop.

With that in mind, today we bring you specific examples of how you can use artificial intelligence in your e‑commerce to increase conversion.

Let’s get to it.

👉 What artificial intelligence is and what it brings to the table

Before we jump the gun, let’s start with a definition.

Artificial intelligence (henceforth AI) is another name to refer to a machine’s intelligence.

In other words, it’s the ability of machines to replicate human intelligence by being able to:

• Make decisions.
• Make predictions.
• Learn.
• Solve problems by itself.

In this vein, AI isn’t just about a program’s base code but also the data it gathers and processes along the way.

As for the role it plays in an e‑commerce, artificial intelligence is a tool that can help manage your whole online store.

Among other advantages, it:

• Saves time and resources: by helping automate certain areas. For example, chatbots (virtual shop assistants) deal with users’ queries on our behalf.
• Helps reduce mistakes: by delegating certain tasks to AI, lots of mistakes are avoided. At the end of the day, as the saying goes, “to err is human”, so machines can make up for this.
• Improves the user experience: potential customers enjoy one-on-one attention and a tailored shopping experience. Navigation becomes smoother and more convenient, making users feel at ease in our shop.
• Helps increase conversion: by improving the user and customer experience, the odds of closing a sale increase.

Right, but let’s cut to the chase: how can we implement AI?

Read on to check out some ideas.

👉  How artificial intelligence can help an e-commerce (+ examples)

As we told you earlier, AI tries to replicate human intelligence. Here’s why that matters.

✅ 1. Personalized shopping experience

When talking about artificial intelligence, a “personalized experience” is one of the concepts that pop up first.

As it turns out, AI is capable of efficiently segmenting users by analyzing their shopping patterns. This means we can offer exclusive and personal content to each potential customer according to their interests.

Product suggestions are just one example of this.

Based on the user’s search history and the way they navigate through your website, AI is capable of determining the products they’d be most interested in.

Let’s say we want to buy a soccer ball.

We run the search and see what’s available. What’s the AI going to do? Based on this search, it assumes we could be interested in soccer-related products.

When we scroll down to the recommended products, we’ll see all sorts of soccer equipment.

This helps you connect with your customers and anticipate their wishes (which gives you more cross-selling opportunities). 😉

✅ 2. Customer service

It goes without saying that you can’t spend 24 hours a day tending to queries by customers. But tools don’t work in shifts.

It’s a highly efficient assistant that’s always going to be available right away, any time.

Chatbots or virtual assistants are the best example.

According to a 2020 MIT Technology survey of over 1,000 business leaders, chatbot customer service was the leading AI app being implemented nowadays.

Take a look at Foodspring, a sports nutrition shop.

When asked about products to gain muscle, their virtual assistant answers with blog posts related to the query.

They’re more than just automatic responses.

Chatbots can understand different ways of asking questions by users and interact with them similarly to how a real person would.

✅ 3. Voice searches

As Gartner predicts, shops that implement visual and voice searches increase their sales by 30%.

In fact, voice searches are quickly becoming the norm.

The reason being that more and more people prefer to do their searches orally over typing them.

There are several different technologies to help with this, such as Google Assistant, which allows you to ask Google something without typing anything at all.

Other well-known voice assistants are Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, both of whom have become part of users’ everyday lives by answering voice searches and interacting with them.

These technologies have the power to help increase sales in every e‑commerce since they make navigation easier.

If you’d like to know how to implement and facilitate voice searches into your online shop, this post on Voice Commerce may come in handy.

✅ 4. Bonus: artificial intelligence and the future of online shops

According to Statista, the AI industry revenue is expected to grow 54% year over year from 2019 to 2020.

This just goes to show how much artificial intelligence is gaining traction in the digital world – and e‑commerce is no exception.

An example of this is the use of tools such as Acquisio to automate traffic-generation campaigns. This tool makes use of artificial intelligence to optimize marketing campaigns.

But how? Well, AI analyzes the trends in real time while tracking fluctuations in the CPC (cost-per-click), thus optimizing the campaigns by achieving the highest return on investment.

As you can see, AI does more than just save time for your scheduled tasks.

Not only do machines process commands but they also establish relationships and interpret data to give you solutions.

👉 How Doofinder uses AI to increase sales

Our search engine also makes use of artificial intelligence to provide your customers with a much more integrated and seamless user experience (which, at the end of the day, equates to more sales).

Keep reading to learn how! 😉

✅ 1. Doofinder’s machines learning

The term “machine learning” refers to the automatic, data-driven learning ability of an artificial intelligence algorithm.

This ability allows the AI to anticipate the users’ needs and to provide them with suggestions according to their tastes.

How is this possible?

• Big Data Analytics: Doofinder draws on analytics such as click-tracking and eye-tracking to retrieve information about the products users have clicked on and how they digest the websites they visit.
• Analysis: to know more about a user’s interests, it gathers information about their on-site behavior, search history, and previous purchases.
• Tailored results: after retrieving all the relevant data, Doofinder offers users customized results according to their interests.

This is possible thanks to the 1-to-1 Search Experience, that is, results being updated in real time according to the user’s preferences.

✅ 2. Other Doofinder functionality that improves UX (and conversion)

An intelligent search engine in an online store can boost sales by 20%.

Here’s a video by Neil Patel, one of the top experts on digital marketing worldwide, explaining how they managed to increase sales thanks to Doofinder.

Wondering how a smart search engine can help you increase your sales?

Here’s how.

Doofinder acts like a shop assistant in a physical store. A shop assistant that:

• Gives the client what they’re looking for right away: users don’t go crazy looking around the shop. Instead, they instantly find what they’re looking for.
• Makes tailored suggestions: what if I don’t have what the user’s looking for? Fear not! Doofinder will offer similar alternatives.
• Recognizes what the client wants even if they don’t know how to spell it: it’s not affected by typos as it relates them to similar terms (if you type “cooler”, it knows you’re referring to a fridge).
• It understands voice searches: it’s configured to understand this type of search, which makes it easier for users to interact with your shop.

Sounds nice, right?

Just wait – we’re getting to the best part.

✅ 3. Try Doofinder – for FREE

Since you still may not know exactly how it works, we’d like you to take Doofinder for a test drive to see for yourself.

And that’s exactly why we give you the option to try it for free for an entire month.

Try it on your e‑commerce to see how Doofinder actually works and, most importantly, how your sales increase.

>>> Click here to sign up and try Doofinder free for 30 days.

👉 What about you? Have you implemented AI into your shop yet?

As you’ve seen, artificial intelligence is much more than the typical pre-defined responses we’re all so used to.

As a smart technology, it’s capable of establishing connections and creating personalized content. It can even learn from experience by interacting with other customers.

If you still haven’t implemented it, you may want to give it a shot after reading this post.

It can improve your conversion and set you apart from your competitors.

Ready to step into the future? 😉