Top Ecommerce Trends for 2022: Does AI Reshape Ecommerce?

The E-commerce and online retail sectors are growing, and as per expert prediction, they will keep increasing in the upcoming years. For example, 95% of purchases will facilitate by E-commerce by 2040. Artificial Intelligence plays a crucial role in the ecommerce trends and online retail sector boom. It has not only encouraged to update the sector: but work more efficiently & effectively and superior for the customers and business owners. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically transformed the direction of societies live and operate. The retail industry has been at the lead of this change, with shopping shifting increasingly internet-driven.

Both essential and nonessential, retailers have had to alter methods, with most of them facing supply chain and inventory provocations throughout the pandemic. While offline retail has been hit hard, online retail continues to increase and flourish.

Such changes have forced retailers to recognize the importance of technology going forward. Certainly, technology has revolutionized the way customers shop, and businesses run stores, enhanced customer experiences, manage back-office operations, etc. But, there is no doubt, to recover from the Covid-19 post-pandemic changes, retail entrepreneurs need to find ways to innovate. The adoption of today’s trending technology AI can help them do that.

Impact Of AI On Ecommerce Industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) has been a game-changer for the retail and E-commerce industries or businesses. It has introduced a completely new level of data processing which leads to more profound business and market insights. According to a report, retail industries or E-commerce businesses that adopted AI in at least one business function — like marketing and sales or human resources — saw an ordinary revenue increase of 70% in 2020. That’s a 7% increase from 2018 and projected sales amount to around $30 – $ 50 trillion by 2025 to 2030. And 77% to 83% of retailers plan to have some kind of AI in place in their business operations by 2022 – 2025.

When we talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI), we’re not talking about substituting in-store sales specialists with robots. Instead, we’re talking about how retailer industries data can be harnessed to better inform content and strategy and contribute better experiences for your retail customers.

If you’re curious to know how exactly can you utilize the benefits of AI in your retail or E-commerce business, Here are a few Ecommerce trends based on Artificial Intelligence that should be on every business’s radar.

AI-Based Top 5 Ecommerce Trends:

1. Conversational AI Chatbot

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Chatbots have grown to be an almost mandatory portion for any website, especially for E-commerce or retail websites. It enables communication with clients regarding online shopping. No matter how small or large a doubt or inquiry, anything can be solved with AI-based Chatbots, and it is estimated as one of the most helpful technologies of Artificial Intelligence. It saves consumers time and provides support to the consumer 24×7. Because of this, conversational AI chatbots became one of the Ecommerce trends. Imagine customers’ satisfaction when they don’t have to wait on the phone to cancel their purchase orders, get a return payment, or even ask a simple inventory question.

The AI chatbots use high-level technology, including machine learning (ML) and natural language understanding (NLU). As a result, they can truly learn on the go and improve their answers based on data from consumer conversations and understanding intent. They can also apply sentiment analysis and gather and analyze conversation information to provide insights into consumer trends.

AI chatbots provide an even higher level of customer service & satisfaction, enhance searching, send notifications about new collections, and suggest similar products. For example, if a consumer already bought a black hoodie, a chatbot can recommend a snapback to match — and the look is complete. According to a report, 80% of retail or e-commerce businesses are already using or going to use AI chatbots shortly to boost their work.

2. Visual search

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Nowadays visual search is one of the most important ecommerce trends. Visual search is like keyword search with pictures. Instead of users having to think about how to find a product by browsing in Google or another search engine, they can just upload a taken photo and view what comes up. This AI-powered innovation recognizes and matches items based on what the consumer wants to look for.

Visual search is a tried and proven AI application in the world of e-commerce or retail industry. It is practiced by business administrators/heads to improve their e-commerce or retail website performance and contribute a more intuitive customer experience. 

Trending AI applications like this really solve a difficulty for consumers. Imagine noticing someone wearing a blazer, but your customer doesn’t know how to express it perfectly with words on your E-commerce site; then how can a customer buy that product. With AI-based visual search, consumers can search with an uploaded photo, and that’s it. The system will find similar items based on the uploaded pictures ‘ colors, shapes, and patterns. The outcomes are more comfortable to scan than text, which makes it easier for buyers to buy the product.

Visual Search Impact on E-commerce

The AI technology in the computer vision market is projected to hit $25,50 billion by 2025. AI-enabled visual search engines and applications, like Google and Kiddle, Meesho, to name a few, change the future of the e-commerce industry today. Visual search systems are a proven and beneficial application of AI in the E-commerce industry. Industry leaders are utilizing it to optimize their E-commerce websites and offer a more spontaneous customer experience. 

The technology is currently undergoing huge advancements, and it will soon be utilized to its full potential. So, to prepare for the future, it’s necessary to optimize your E-commerce website’s search engine for image-heavy inquiries.

3. Augmented reality

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This Augmented reality (AR) is arguably the most powerful trend among the eCommerce trends. Clients being able to examine products in 3D — rather than just looking at images — encourages bringing the brick-and-mortar store entirely online. Unexpectedly during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, these Ecommerce trends are supposed to proceed rising in demand.

The most easy-to-describe augmented reality use case is choosing the best furniture. Most of us have purchased a piece of furniture online, no matter how small. Yet, even when the product images were detailed, there was probably still a lingering feeling of doubt. For example, Is it going to fit in my hall or bedroom? Is it the correct color? Does it really match my other furniture? Etc. Augmented Reality (AR) in retail/E-commerce will provide answers to all these questions as precisely as possible by superimposing a furniture product to a place.

In fact, more than 75% of customers said that 3D and AR would boost their confidence that they’re purchasing the correct and best product and that they’d be more excited in shopping on a website that offers that option. 47% of consumers would be willing to pay more, too.

Few examples of AR applications in the retail and E-commerce industry :

L’Oréal Paris tried an AR-based filter for virtual makeup to engage with younger buyers who spend more time on social apps. For example, using these filters lets customers choose the best suitable products like lipstick, eyeshadow palettes, blush palettes, etc.

Amazon and IKEA have already introduced these kinds of solutions on the cutting edge. Like IKEA Place mobile app lets customers put 3D versions of furniture in their actual rooms over their mobile camera. Then, clients easily turn that virtual furniture at any angle and place it in any corner in the selected room. Customers can now find out in advance whether an interior furniture item will fit into their rooms or not and whether it will look beautiful with the overall design or not, etc.

Another fantastic application we need to mention is virtual fitting rooms. These are an excellent way for consumers to save time and find the perfect outfit with all the elements absolutely matched — in a span of minutes! For example, a virtual fitting room system will scan your customers in 20 seconds and measure 200,000 points of their bodies in this period. Companies like Levi’s, Gap, Brooks Brothers, Old Navy, and others installed these scanners in their stores and received massive sales increases.

4. Recommender Systems

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With growing demand and online customers, e-commerce and retail industries are multiplying, and the competition in the e-commerce industry has also expanded significantly. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

in the form of recommender engine applications is widely applied in these e-commerce companies, which aim to give accurate recommendations to their customers about their choices, with as little information as possible to gain a competitive edge.

The primary purpose of a recommender system or recommender engine is to know your consumer and tempt that user with an offer they can’t refuse. E-commerce and retail industries are realizing the value of recommender systems, so they are being extensively utilized in the domain of e-platforms and are increasingly being raised by upcoming e-commerce firms shortly. 

A recommender system or recommender engine can help e-commerce industries to achieve their various objectives. For example, this system can typically enhance the customer experience & services and increase business revenue in the subsequent ways:

Boosted conversion rate:

A great recommender system produces offers that the consumer can’t refuse and drastically improves the customer conversion rate ratio.  

Improved customer loyalty:

Suppose a customer recognizes that the recommendations offered by a particular e-commerce platform are of excellent quality. That means those recommendations are satisfying with their likes. In that case, the client is more likely to trust in the future, too, becoming loyal customers. 

Enhanced customer experience:

Offering perfect recommendations to the client can also save time who might be waiting to buy items that they might not know much about. For example, a buyer is looking to buy some motivational book on a particular e-commerce site for the first time. In this case, recommendations can list the best motivational books in some price range from different authors. Again, this makes it easier for the user to create a familiarized decision.

Recognition customer base:

Recommender System or recommender engine can also identify popular things in certain areas or demographics. This can help e-commerce companies make proposals for new customers for whom there’s no additional known information. 

A lot of recommendation systems have been developed for e-commerce over the past two decades. Some of the successful use cases of recommender systems can be discovered in today’s top organizations, including Netflix, Amazon, YouTube. 

According to a recent study, 75% of consumers support brands to use their information to enhance their experiences during online. Thanks to AI-powered systems, it collects $1.3 billion annually and delivers 75% of suitable content to customers through targeted recommendations. 

5. Last one of the Ecommerce Trends : Social media analytics

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the analysis of ecmmrce business social media data is another one of the ecommerce trends. The social media network has increased extraordinary attention in the last few decades. As the growth takes place, accessing social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Instagram, and YouTube has become extremely affordable. In addition, utilization of one or more social media platforms, it has very convenient for E-commerce to reach customers through those platforms.

But how is it possible to conduct social media analysis? A Social media analytics application can help companies to analyze their business competitor’s social media performance. From a long-term view, it can also help you to be ahead of your e-commerce competitors.

This is the main reason where social media and social media analysis are of tremendous value to e-commerce. Online shopping owes much of its success to social media. As social media is a melting-pot of customers, conversations between users, and customer behavior, brands and businesses love to hear in and watch. Customers are hesitant to share their purchasing items experiences through ratings and reviews on e-commerce sites unless specifically asked. But customers share their views and experiences about your products on social media openly and very usually.

It is where customers or buyers, among other discussions, share their opinions and thoughts on their shopping products, experiences, satisfaction, sentiments, and plans for future purchases. These comments and discussions, in turn, influence other consumers. In short, social media contributes to a self-generating world of clients and their opinion data. For businesses have a appropriate social media analysis software, that is a gold mine of customer and competitors information. 

What is Social Media Analytics ?

Social media analysis is the process of data collection from social media platforms and analysis of that information. That will be leading to a better understanding of your consumers, user intentions, sentiments, and behavior. This leads to forming more beneficial marketing strategies, campaigns, achieving better customer service, and larger business decision-making at every level. To e-commerce businesses always on their toes to beat their competition, this kind of listening to your customer through social media is simply unavoidable.

Few benefits :

1. Improving your understanding towards your competitors and customers
2. Recognizing product and service delivery needs;
3. Enhancing and promoting product and service design, development, and marketing in new ways;
4. Diminishing costs of reach and marketing to consumers;
5. Engaging buyers in happy and effective ways;
6. Boosting sales and sales revenue;
7. Growing brand awareness and salience;
8. Raising brand reputation.