Raj De Datta is CEO of Bloomreach, a leader in commerce experience. His book, “The Digital Seeker,” is available now.
With global e-commerce sales projected to reach a staggering $58.74 trillion by 2028, businesses are increasingly turning to AI to create a new kind of shopping experience for customers—and rightfully so. AI offers a range of benefits for the e-commerce experience, from personalized product recommendations to more efficient customer service to marketing campaigns delivered at optimal times.
These AI use cases in e-commerce have already shown substantial results for businesses. And now, next-generation AI has opened up entirely new possibilities—possibilities for a world of two-way marketing and truly conversational online shopping. The challenge for businesses will be in connecting those experiences across the customer journey.
AI In E-Commerce Today
AI-powered tools have paved the way for e-commerce personalization as we know it today. A common application among many businesses is the personalization of product recommendations, which offers the ability to both increase average order value and decrease cart abandonment rate.
While many have ingrained these recommendations into certain aspects of their shopping experience, others have used them in a far more significant capacity. Stitch Fix, for instance, has revolutionized e-commerce clothing shopping by incorporating machine learning algorithms to analyze customer feedback and offer tailored style and product recommendations.
In marketing, we see AI helping teams do more quickly. The use of AI in scaling campaigns helps marketers reach millions of customers with content that is still relevant to each individual. It allows for the automation of important content like welcome campaigns. It can also assist in where and how that content is sent, for example, triggering campaigns to be sent at the time when the customer is most likely to read it or in the channel they’re most likely to engage with.
But while the AI-driven shopping experiences we’ve seen thus far have been impactful for businesses, they may pale in comparison to what will be offered with the power of generative AI.
AI In E-Commerce Tomorrow
The way we think about e-commerce 10 years from now may be entirely different from how we’ve thought about it these past 10 years. Google and Amazon taught consumers how to shop online, typing a query into a search bar and sorting through a selection of products. Generative AI is allowing us to see another way and could fundamentally change consumer expectations of the shopping experience. I believe it’s going to enable truly conversational commerce, moving us from a one-way to a two-way world. The expectation of the consumer is not to be marketed to but to be spoken with.
With a conversational future for e-commerce, online shopping becomes incredible not only for customers but for seekers—those who may not be looking for a specific item but have a deeper motivation that led them to the site. Someone who recently moved into a home, for example, could say, “I’m redecorating my living room,” and engage in conversation that gets them to exactly what they want.
Importantly, that experience can span channels—a critical role marketers will play in creating this new kind of shopping journey. No matter where a customer begins their journey with a brand, it moves seamlessly with them, essentially allowing them to build their own journey in real time.
The Potential Pitfalls Of Disconnection
That “seamless” piece is what marketers and e-commerce teams must be focused on as the adoption of generative AI grows. Today, different pieces of the e-commerce experience are often managed separately by disconnected solutions, each powered by a different view of the customer. That’s the reason why you may have received an email recommending you buy a product you’ve already bought.
The frustration of that kind of experience for customers will increase exponentially when they’ve already invested time into a conversation with your brand. If your customer has repeated conversations in every different channel, always starting from scratch, every conversation becomes a bit meaningless. It does little for the relationship you’re trying to build.
As businesses prepare for tomorrow’s e-commerce, they must invest time and resources into connection. Start by taking stock of your data because that customer view is what fuels the connected (or disconnected) experience. In the past, data and data management were confined to tech departments and CIOs, but today, data is utilized widely across organizations, often resulting in tech siloes. This is particularly true within e-commerce teams, where functions like marketing and merchandising work separately, using different tools and data sources even as they work to drive similar end results.
It’s critical that every leader understands where data is being collected, stored and utilized within their own departments, but that knowledge should be shared cross-functionally to help everyone gain an understanding of where gaps or overlaps exist.
The Edge Of Transformation
With generative AI, we’re now on the edge of e-commerce transformation that we simply have never seen before. That offers incredible opportunities for marketers and businesses at large to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. The ones who begin to prepare now and understand this changing environment are the ones who I believe will lead the charge.
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