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How Using AI Can Help Grow Your eCommerce Store

AI, or artificial intelligence, is finding new uses virtually every day. We’re beginning to see the role of artificial intelligence in every field from cybersecurity to human resources to healthcare and more. One sector that should not disregard the benefits of artificial intelligence is eCommerce. AI can prove to be an incredibly valuable resource for eCommerce businesses big and small, and it’s certainly a new tool that business owners shouldn’t be ignoring.

But if you don’t know much about AI yet, you might be wondering how exactly it can work for you and your business. The concept of a whole new technology can be a bit scary and overwhelming, but we’re here to break it down for you. In this article, we’ll let you in on five of the biggest ways that artificial intelligence can help you enhance and improve your eCommerce brand and take your business to totally new heights.

 

The Power of AI for Enhancing Your eCommerce Brand

AI is only getting more and more important in all kinds of aspects of our daily lives, so it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence is a given in virtually every shopping experience we encounter. The use of artificial intelligence that allows small business owners to handle time-sensitive tasks without worrying about getting behind, quickly and more accurately create reports, ensure that orders are placed and shipped on time and under budget, and so many other vital aspects of your business.

Honestly, we could write entire articles about the importance and potential of AI for your eCommerce business, but this post is simply meant to be an introduction. Below, we’ll go into detail about just five of the ways that artificial intelligence can enhance your eCommerce business both on the outside for your customers and on the inside for you and your team. Each of these applications can help your business to increase profits, save money, reduce stress, save time, and overall run a more effective business that grows to its fullest potential. A few of the key ways that artificial intelligence can help improve your eCommerce brand include:

 

Email marketing can be a key part of your overall digital marketing strategy when it comes to reaching out to new customers or getting old customers to come back. In a typical email marketing strategy, emails are sent out at predetermined intervals of time and cover a wide variety of topics such as benefits of the product, various sales or discounts that might be going on, or responses to a visitor leaving an abandoned cart on the website or another action. Along with other methods like social media and pay-per-click advertisements, email marketing can prove to be one of the most effective ways to reach out to your customers.

An email campaign can only prove successful if it’s done right. The messages within the emails must be relevant to the individual customer, personalized towards where the individual is in their buyer’s journey, and timed accordingly so that they are more likely to be opened, read, and acted upon. For smaller companies that may not have much experience with email marketing or the budget to hire a marketing manager or agency to handle these matters, getting all of these criteria right can seem quite overwhelming. But with AI, it’s easy to analyze customers behavior and demographics, allowing emails to be more tailored without the hours of painstaking research.

Inventory management, and doing it properly, can truly make a break a business’s bottom line. It’s not just about ensuring that the right products are coming in at the right time; it’s also about predicting demand levels to ensure you don’t have too much or too little of a product, deciding which products aren’t selling as they should and what sales or promotions might be relevant to get them out the door, and a whole host of other criteria to ensure that you are spending your inventory budget as effectively as possible.

Managing your inventory properly can impact every other section of your business, from sales to customer support to internal affairs and more. Especially as your business grows, it can get harder and harder to manage your inventory by hand, which is where AI can come in. Artificial intelligence has the ability to accurately predict demand levels, streamline storage patterns for the most cost-effective methods, target promotions to get slower moving items sold, and so much more. Not only can a small business save money from all of these benefits on their own, but businesses can also save since they are not paying an employee to figure all of this out on their own.

It’s no secret that not every person who visits a website is going to make a purchase. In fact, potential customers typically have to be retargeted, sometimes multiple times, before they eventually come back and buy the products that they have their eyes on. Retargeting can play a huge role in getting those potential customers back and helping them to follow through, turning a simple set of eyes into a true conversion.

Retargeting must be handled differently than typical ads within a marketing campaign, but again, not every small business has experience with this or has the money to hire an agency to handle it. With artificial intelligence, however, the process of creating a retargeting campaign becomes much easier. AI is able to analyze customer behavior and determine the intent behind their actions, helping to better determine what they had their eyes on and why they didn’t make a purchase at first. For a small eCommerce business, every opportunity to make a sale is incredibly important, and the use of AI in customer retargeting gives businesses a much greater chance of capturing those precious conversions.

Many eCommerce websites turn to chatbots as a convenient and helpful way to help their customers navigate their web page without needing to hire a customer service representative to respond to every request. These chatbots allow users to get a recommendation, be taken to the FAQ or returns section of the website, learn about recent sales, and many other options that can be personalized depending on the company. Chatbots are the perfect example of how AI can help a customer through a sale and leave them satisfied without the internal team ever having to lift a finger.

AI may be able to predict what a specific customer is looking for and offer those relevant pages, perhaps even upselling them on products that lead to more profits for your company. Chatbots can also handle basic questions that would be incredibly time-consuming for your customer service team to handle individually. AI chatbots are even able to lead your potential customers to relevant coupons that could push them to make a purchase they’re considering. There are truly countless possibilities when it comes to the utilization of chatbots, and all of these capabilities allow you to take the stress off of your customer service team and simply watch the purchases come through.

We touched on this topic briefly in the last section, but it’s worth repeating and expanding upon. Artificial intelligence is one of the best ways to provide potential customers with personalized recommendations for the products that can actually benefit them and lead them to make a purchase. Of course, chatbots are a great way to utilize this technology, but AI can also make your website’s search engine smarter by tracking items that a specific user may have searched for and recommending similar pieces for purchase.

All of the topics we’ve covered boil down to one major factor: personalization. It’s impossible to narrow down your market efforts to meet the needs of every single potential customer, but it can also be hard to ensure your campaigns are tailored enough to remain relevant to everyone who sees them. Personalization can go a long way in helping your customers to feel like your company actually cares about them and their needs and has the products they are searching for, which ultimately results in a more likely sale.

 

Power Up Your Business With DEAR Systems

We as a collective have only just begun to discover the advantages of AI as far as eCommerce is concerned, but it’s never too early to begin reaping the benefits of technology for your business! To get started, consider investing in the cloud ERP software from DEAR Systems. Our platform is able to be tailored to the exact needs of your business and offers features within inventory management, manufacturing, POS, automation, eCommerce, and so much more. Our ERP software integrates with many of the programs you’re already using, making for a seamless transition.

For more information about our software Contact Us or Get Free 14-Days Access

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