The Power of Artificial Intelligence in Ecommerce
What To Expect From Chatbots & Personal Assistants In 2017
Just as the American tech giants opened up the use of their APIs to developers in 2015, so too was 2016 historically marked as the year chatbots came onto the scene. Founded on basic principles of artificial intelligence, they were launched to help with the shopping experience, provide assistance, answer questions, and engage customers with a brand.
The premise involves interactive messaging which takes place via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Google Allo, all with the purpose of putting a customer at ease by making them feel as if they’re talking with a real person.
The more customers interact with the bots, the smarter they become, enhancing their ability to provide useful services — most bot programs incorporate an extraordinarily steep learning curve, letting them learn and adapt to human users quickly and efficiently through predictive algorithms. And, in an otherwise cold and impersonal world of computerized commerce, they also provide an element of humanness.
“Websites are replaced by apps, and apps are replaced by bots.” — Satya Nadella, Microsof CEO
We are now in an era when people are using messenger apps more than social networks, and nowhere is this more apparent than with “Facebook Messenger which is used by over 1 billion people every month” and is growing even faster than its complementing Facebook website.
Many experts believe “chatbots are new apps”, and in light of this businesses are feeling the pressure to invest in bot technology in order to stay competitive. As a result, some software firms have already opened their doors to eager and enterprising companies by offering a number of platforms that allow you to create your own chatbot.
The philosophy behind chatbots is rooted not only in technological innovation, but also in improving efficiency, communication, and overall organization. In many ways, they’ve been acting as a predecessor to one of the bigger and more fundamental elements of any online based company — a fully interactive digital personal assistant. This concept isn’t entirely novel, and we’ve probably had exposure to variant DPA’s like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, or the movie Her. These examples represent a phenomenon that will likely hallmark 2017 — the advent and implementation of talking-to-machines.
This fact alone should force companies to think seriously about what sorts of changes can be adapted to their business models.
“How Can Actually Artificial Intelligent Improve My Online Store?”
Gone are the days when AI was confined to science fiction or theoretical application. And although we might still be decades away from creating fully sentient programs, the available technology in the field of artificial intelligence presents a number of opportunities. The most important step is preparing a strategy in advance, and understanding both the strengths and weaknesses of chatbots, talking-to-machines, and interactive learning programs so that you can make the most of them!
1. Improve SEO Through Better Product Description
Personal assistants can recognize speech and act as browsers, meaning that they are uniquely qualified to enhance search optimization — specifically, optimization of your product attributes so that the PA can easily find the product the consumer is looking for.
This involves manipulating the ranking in browsers in order to compile the best results on a specific user query. But it doesn’t stop there: many AI are able to include and adjust to multi-variations of keywords. This also means evaluating results differently depending on whether a user is searching via desktop, mobile, or through voice recognition. It also allows for a more fluid and streamlined experience — instead of needing to enter precise keywords or phrases to find what you’re looking for, these AIs are able to predict and learn from past habits in order to deliver related search results. The more your AI interacts with customers by letting them describe or search for your product in their own words, the more user-friendly your app becomes — and will even suggest new keywords that potential customers might be interested in!
Read more about: How to Killer Keyword Lists for AdWords
2. Recognize Customer’s Emotions And Personalize Campaigns
Current AIs are being driven more and more towards social applications which are able to monitor customer’s reactions and moods, and thus adapt their communication in order to maximize a customer’s interest or help them with their shopping experience.
Companies have already started to mine social media to understand emotions and preferences as expressed on social media sites, which will be a big step in preparing AI for real human interaction. Bluefin Labs, for example, was acquired by Twitter in 2013 and is one company heavily involved in mining Twitter postings to help companies understand how their customers perceive various product offerings, according to research out of the University of Alaska.
AI is able to create customized commercial messages for individual consumers based on their user profile and media behavior. This then helps you to modify campaigns in real-time in order to increase the chance of converting visitors into a customer base.
Recapping On Your Progress
Imagine, for a moment, that digital personal assistants are a reality and a staple of any business environment. Like any employee, it’s important to be able to check on their work and see where things are working and where they can be improved. This is where analytics tools come in handy. For example, special dashboards in the MonkeyData app allow you to see what’s happening on your site real-time, and then make changes at will. Unlike Google Analytics which requires clicking through a variety of windows and wading through confusing stats, MonkeyData lets you see data from all your sources in one place. Pretty easy, right?
Do you want to learn more about benefits of tracking real-time analytics?
3. Improve Customer’s Shopping Experience
Customer’s needs are dynamic, not static, and AI helps retailers understand these needs in a timely and efficient matter that is contextual and relevant. This leads to greater ease and speed in finding the right product and making its purchase, and in the go-go world of online businesses being able to demonstrate that you value a customer’s time increases the likelihood of them returning and established a bond of trust.
Powerful Image Recognition
The capacity to upload the photos for free, tag locations and people, and identify customer reactions to products and brands is not an incidental element of the Internet or social media platforms — for AI, this is a training ground. Whether it’s Facebook, Google, or any other system, the more exposure an AI has to information the stronger it can become at predicting customer behavior.
For example, say you’re walking down the street and see a pair of shoes you like in a store. You don’t know the name or brand, but you snap a quick picture of it and upload it to an AI’s search bar. In seconds, it goes through its extensive library of websites, uses its image-recognition software to find a picture that resembles the one you just uploaded, and informs you that it’s a rare boutique brand from France. In fact, last year Facebook took the first step by opening up its image-recognition AI software to everyone using GitHub, and have been experiencing considerable success as a result.
Customer Or Self-Service?
Of all the predictions of 2017, one of the biggest is that FAQ will shift to dynamic communication with PA or chatbots. Your customer can ask a series of questions to the shop’s personal assistant who will find the best product that fits him or her. This way your customer can multitask by searching for presents while doing something else. Digital self-service will likely be one of the more notable elements of online retail in the future, and educating yourself about digital engagement solutions is one of the smartest ways to get acquainted with the technology — this means understanding the potential and limitations of AI, but also becoming familiar with customer expectations of self-service tools.
Summary
Artificial Intelligence has always been relegated to pipe-dreams or movies, but as the technology becomes more and more advanced it is slowly turning into a reality. Our reliance on information systems and networks has become ubiquitous in our daily lives, and as a result so too has it become inextricably linked with the digital progress of eCommerce.
While this can seem overwhelming and scary — especially to businesses or companies making that transition to being online — the apps, analytic tools, and AI software out there is designed specifically to be user friendly and easy to use. Those companies who are open to new ideas and willing to learn and adapt to the marketplace are invariably the ones who succeed and grow, and 2017 is no exception — stay up to date and enjoy the ride!
I’ll be happy if you share this article by tapping the ❤ below. Even happier if you subscribe!
Or leave us a comment on what to include in following newsletters.
Thank you & have a good day!
