Big data and AI has been a buzzword floating around the digital space for a few years, a concept that is murky to some and not understood at all by others. As the convergence of trends redefining the IT industry, Big Data and AI are no longer something that only remains in books and sci-fi movies, these changes are more embracing the e-commerce industry with agility and diligence. Now, the tech buffs are eyeing an iconic change to evolve by the combination of big data and AI.

E-commerce is a dynamic sector with a basic goal to bring the best of offline shopping experience to the online space, by offering the shoppers a seamless way to discover the products they are looking for. Big data and AI are going to the most intriguing development ever made in this field. How Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays the crucial role in the eCommerce platform. So, let's have a look at how Big data and AI transforms the e-commerce industry.

Big Data In eCommerce Industry

Big data is the combined collection of traditional and digital data from inside and outside of your business. Its purpose is to be a source of analysis and continued discovery for measuring past trends and performances growth with greater data insights to gain customer satisfaction with better products and services. The introduction of big data allows e-commerce businesses to have an access to significantly larger amounts of data, to translate growth in revenues and to gain more customers and streamline operations for success.

• Customer Shopping Experience: An eCommerce provider can be made capable enough to re-target the consumers by recommending the items of their interest. Using Big data eCommerce providers can find the meaningful patterns in customer behavior, browsing interests and purchase history. Also, they can finetune their merchandising strategy and produce a higher level of customer satisfaction for shoppers with an optimum customer experience.
• Offers and Recommendations Personalisation: By utilizing big-data insights, you can personalize your e-commerce store more easily for seamless and differentiated customer experiences. Big data creates a more accurate picture of customer behavior to develop relevant, personalized and differentiated offers in hours, not weeks or months. Hence e-commerce providers make huge investments to drive the new customers to their store by different offers and coupons to maximize their ROI.
• Better Customer Service: Poor quality services negatively impact on the brand reputation of the e-commerce store and shopping experience of the customer. Thanks to big data, it enables e-commerce providers to better respond to shoppers needs. Big data plays an important role in maintaining stronger and longer-lasting customer relationships, simply because they better know their shoppers.
• Streaming Analytics: Big data gives the streaming or real-time analytics so-called “real-time business intelligence” to gain insight of the customer base. Information on shopper's demographics and their navigation way to the e-commerce store offers a lot of understanding and enable us to make revenue by personalizing shoppers experience. Also, the insights are excellent for guiding your e-commerce strategy by analyzing the amount of traffic and transactions you acquire on your online store.

How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Impacting The eCommerce Industry

Artificial intelligence, powering eCommerce providers to get closer to their customers by creating more personalized customer experience and rolling down the red carpet to enhance brand competitiveness and customer loyalty. It offers more accurate product recommendations and faster search results for shoppers to discover what they want with just a single click. The explosion of AI in e-commerce has allowed e-commerce providers to expand and cater to a growing number of customers, more accurately and efficiently with a streamlined operation.

• Efficient Visual Search: AI-powered visual bots allow the shoppers to find a product through uploading an image and this search helps them to figure out the exact product they are looking for by making the search process shorter and seamless. Visual search has escalated the level of engagement that shoppers can have with an e-commerce platform. In short, AI visual search provides a newer and easier alternative for fashion and lifestyle products that are difficult to describe in words.
• Personalisation with AI Technologies: AI captures data from all of these avenues such as social media, chatbots, customer service interactions, site-pathing, mobile messaging and really any digital channel that consumers touch, collate it, analyze it and present it in a way that taking account of each shopper's own tastes. At its best, AI combines the knowledge of an experienced real-life salesperson with the ease and accessibility of the shopping experience.
• Customer-centric: AI helps e-commerce providers to optimize the patterns of the sale of a product and also the pulse of the customers of what kind of things they are purchasing in a minute manner. Leveraging AI enables e-commerce providers to offer a customer-centric experience throughout the shopping journey through advanced image and video recognition. In short, AI offers a competitive edge that available to e-commerce providers of any size or budget.

Final Thought

Big data and AI is changing the world pretty fast, making it easier for online stores to be successful and useful. According to futurists, this technology is surely going to reshape the e-commerce industry in future. The journey seems to be a long one, particularly for small e-commerce businesses who have to think twice before making such a massive investment. But, failing to use Big data and AI may put retailers at a significant disadvantage compared to competitors. Now, it is the right time to tap into these technologies to get ahead to get the most advantage with a better return.