Why online retailers need to embrace AI to grow their business

AI is shifting the face of online retail. It’s no longer shocking for a customer to receive a personalised, hand-picked product recommendation from an online retailer. In fact, it’s becoming the norm. According to an Accenture study, nearly three-quarters of consumers shop with retailers that employ personalised marketing strategies. And if retailers are to continue to succeed in today’s digital age, they must remain ahead of competitors by putting these same strategies into place. Let’s take a look at how AI can help.

5 Benefits of AI for online retail

Engage shoppers the second they enter your store

One of the biggest problems with online shopping is that customers are faced with too many choices. This can lead to customers bouncing away from your site, as they get overwhelmed by the options and don’t know what products to buy.

With AI, you can keep them engaged throughout their entire journey on your website (Idea, Research, Shortlist, Buy) and reduce bounce rate and dwell time by giving them an immediate understanding of their needs. You’ll be able to adapt at every step of their shopping journey so that it feels like a personalised experience for each user—not just one generic set of features or tools for everyone who comes onto your site. Here’s an example of an electronics retailer using AI to increase the time spent on their site by four times.

Bring in-store levels of service online

One of the biggest challenges is that traditional retail principles like curation and service are missing from eCommerce websites.

The AI Shop Assistant bridges the gap between online and in-store retail by bringing these missing elements into an online store, allowing retailers to provide their customers with an experience that is similar to what they would expect in a physical store.

Reduce manual work and overhead costs with Smart Merchandising

It can automate many manual tasks that waste resources and time for retailers and merchandisers. For example, Shopbox uses AI to dynamically merchandise any stock changes and updates that come with changing retail seasons. It automatically considers promotions and stock updates and merges them with your existing catalogue. Once it’s set, you can forget about it. 

AI also helps retailers forecast demand for their product range which will help them predict future business needs. By taking advantage of an AI solution that integrates data from a variety of sources (e-commerce platforms like Shopify or Magento), retailers are able to process large amounts of information quickly and make valuable predictions about the future direction of their business.

Serve up personalised recommendations in real-time

In a world dominated by Netflix and Amazon, generic ‘personalisation’ tools no longer work. We can no longer rely on historical data when building a profile of our customers but will instead need to take into account their current preferences and behaviour in real-time. It is the era of hyper-personalisation.

AI-driven personalisation tools such as Shopbox are able to learn from the customer form their very first click and adapt at every step whether they’re on the homepage, product listing or category page. This means we can provide them with a hyper-personalised experience that truly makes them feel valued as an individual rather than just another number on our database.

 

Reduce friction due to out-of-stock sizes

As eCommerce continues to grow, it’s more important than ever for retailers to focus on providing the best experience possible.You know how frustrating it is when you find a product you like on an online store but it’s not available in your size? Dealing with stockouts is one of the crucial ways to reduce friction. With an intuitive AI shop assistant, you can eliminate that friction by only showing the products in the size the customer is looking for on your online store.

By removing friction from the shopping journey, shoppers spend more time browsing and discovering products in your store, converting at a higher rate, instead of going to competitors..

By using AI, retailers can increase conversion, provide better customer experience and reduce churn

• Increase conversion: AI can help retailers increase conversion by providing hyper-personalised recommendations for products that are relevant to the customer.Typically, Shopbox users see 3X increase in conversion.
• Provide better customer experience: With AI, you can provide a better customer experience by personalising every step and reducing friction. Average AOV increase is between 10-40% for Shopbox users.
• Reduce churn rate: A retailer’s main goal should always be retention rather than acquisition; after all high retention rates lead directly into net profit growth! A good customer experience guarantees repeat purchases. Shopbox clients see a 20% increase in retention rate.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s clear that AI has a bright future in the retail industry. It can help retailers grow by making their business more efficient and providing customers with a better experience. But many retailers struggle to make the right investments in their eCommerce platform that would enable them to take advantage of these new technologies. With so much competition out there, online retailers need to make sure they’re staying ahead of their competitors with innovative solutions. It’s also important to keep abreast of retail trends – luckily there is a curated guide that can help you embrace the shifting retail landscape from Shopbox AI.