In recent years you have most likely heard a lot about the ever-increasing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on almost every aspect of human life. It’s no longer a miracle that streaming services such as Spotify or Netflix can make recommendations that pretty accurately match your taste and preferences. Luckily, you don’t have to be a part of a multi-billion company to allow yourself to benefit from the adoption of AI-driven software solutions. Even a small company can significantly improve its overall performance with an AI system if it relies on technological means for offering clients its products, improving customer support services, or tracking the movement of items through the warehouse.
The application of artificial intelligence in eCommerce allows using business and customer data for making predictions that are not so obvious to the naked eye of customers looking for a specific product on a website and business owners planning the strategy of promoting goods and services. However, besides the possibilities, new technologies may bring additional challenges as well. Therefore, some virtual marketplace owners may not feel so optimistic about adopting new technologies, which several decades ago were nothing more than an artefact of popular science films. Today, we’ll consider how artificial intelligence can become an integral part of your marketplace and change your customers’ experience for the better without any dramatic changes in the everyday shopping experience.
How a Pinch of AI Can Change Familiar Things Beyond Recognition
First of all, let’s look at which aspects of your marketplace functionality artificial intelligence can be helpful. The short answer will be in almost all of them. For example, if you grab a notepad and pen and write down every problem you face throughout the day, there will be practically no items on your list that could not be solved with the help of artificial intelligence. Well, probably except for a broken coffee machine.
As you can remember, we’ve mentioned how good Spotify is in recommending songs and playlists to the audience based on previous use of the platform. The good news is that artificial intelligence algorithms that provide music lovers with new juicy K-pop hits may also serve you well whether your marketplace sells books or musical instruments. Suppose you have a website or a mobile app (in a perfect world, you should have both) that allows customers to buy your products online. In that case, there’s nothing easier to process historical data on online shopping for making personalized recommendations and special offers.
Read also Key Reasons Why Your E-commerce Business Needs Mobile App
If parents want to please their child with the latest video game console, recommending a shortlist of the most popular games according to the purchases of your clientele can be an excellent opportunity to gain their trust and make them return to your marketplace again. Custom AI software can recommend products to an online shopper based on their previous purchases or according to the choices and feedback gathered from all your buyers. For example, say a person wants to buy a tourist tent and doesn’t have time for the research. Your marketplace platform can automatically offer the products that gained the highest rates among the customers in such a case.
Besides offering the products that will suit the current needs of your buyers, artificial intelligence algorithms can automatically adjust the pricing policy according to the current supply and demand. Such systems integrated with the warehouse software can automatically lower the price for seasonal products by the end of the season if your warehouse is littered with them. After all, what could be worse than a warehouse filled up with skis when the summer sun is blazing outside the window.
For a virtual marketplace owner, it’s not enough to win the battle for the customers’ wallets and credit cards. Gaining their trust and liability is a more sophisticated task requiring a lot of effort. With artificial intelligence, you can enhance your customer relationship management and make clients buy products from your company over and over again. All the info accumulated by your marketplace platform can be processed in a blink of an eye to providing you with such important information as who is most likely to buy from you, what products they’ll most likely to buy, and, what’s more important, how your company can effectively engage with them according to their spending habits.
Even if you provide every item available on your online marketplace with comprehensive product information, it won’t guarantee that some additional questions won’t arise in the head of a potential buyer. In such a scenario, they will most likely try to contact a representative of your marketplace to clarify the questions raised. Of course, if you have an employee who doesn’t have to eat or sleep and can answer any question related to any product 24/7, this problem doesn’t concern you, and you can harmlessly jump to the next chapter. In another case, you can think of adopting an AI-drive chatbot to take care of the lion’s share of potential problems. Modern marketplaces often use automated chatbots to provide customer support services practically indistinguishable from communicating with a living person. Artificial intelligence and machine learning help chatbots advance in time and respond to more complex customer requests efficiently.
It’s essential to know your marketplace’s clients, but it’s also crucial to know your products well. Artificial intelligence software with predictive analytics features it provides can be irreplaceable for effective inventory management. In addition, marketplace owners can receive vital information from warehouse management software empowered with artificial intelligence. For example, items movements through the warehouse can be used for developing insights on factors that have the most impact on product demand, and predictive analytics can tell in advance what future needs in the market your marketplace can benefit from. What’s important to note is that with machine learning, the longer you use your AI-driven system, the more accurate predictions about your online marketplace and its customers it will make.
Benefits of Adopting Artificial Intelligence Software for Your Marketplace
This chapter will talk about the benefits that collaboration with a company providing custom software development services can bring to an online marketplace. Nowadays, a personalized shopping experience is one of the critical factors determining the choice of a particular online marketplace. Sometimes a customer feels bored and wants to see what’s new your marketplace has to offer. It could be a great moment to offer a newly released fantasy book with excellent reviews to someone who’s already purchased dozens of similar products from you. The progress in artificial intelligence allows achieving outstanding levels of personalizing the shopping experience, which can be helpful if you want your marketplace to stand out from the crowd.
Targeted advertising messages to your customers will make the visitors of your marketplace feel as if they are interacting with somebody who knows them and can give some good advice. On the other hand, blind ad posting can ruin a shopping experience and turn it into communication with a soulless spam bot trying to sell a tractor to a trombone player. Artificial intelligence is the exact tool that can help your marketplace to build valuable insights and provide customers with the products they need here and now.
Additionally, adopting artificial intelligence systems can be a good option for seamless automation of your marketplace business. Decreasing the need for human intervention can lower the probability of human error and speed up dozens of daily tasks, from scheduling emails and loyalty discounts to hiring specialists with a set of skills most demanded by your company at the moment.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is not science fiction anymore. Nowadays, it’s nothing more than another tool that helps to reach new heights of productivity for dozens of industries without the need to break the habitual way of doing business. Software development companies can create enterprise-wide systems with sophisticated AI algorithms under the hood that have intuitive user interfaces and require no more effort to master than the usual office applications. For example, suppose you struggle with delivering good shopping experiences with your online marketplace. In that case, you can look into the countless ways the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning can help promote your products and build relationships with customers.
If you want to increase your marketplace productivity with custom AI software, don’t hesitate to contact us.