Guest post from Rebuy - the only fully connected end-to-end personalization platform powered by AI.
From colors and styles to personalization and tailored recommendations, today’s consumer wants more than products. They want an experience. Rebuy is the go-to solution for Shopify merchants who want to offer more to their site visitors. Rebuy’s proprietary AI and ML models equip your store with powerful personalization, and it works with your favorite apps from Attentive to Tapcart.
With Rebuy, you can display data-driven product recommendations through onsite search, increase AOV with Smart Cart™ upsells and cross-sells, and extend customer lifetime value with intelligent post-purchase offers—all within one platform. With a dedicated support team and over 10,000 customers, Rebuy is there to help you navigate the future of personalized commerce.
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To compete in e-commerce in 2024, you need the most advanced technology to best serve your customers. AI is all the hype these days, so here’s what you need to know about using it to grow your business.
AI in E-commerce
Artificial intelligence: Trendy buzzword or game-changing technology? Since the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022, the amount of press, new startups, and real-world use cases has accelerated at the speed of light. The number of options is overwhelming.
Now is the time for you to get ahead of the curve and better compete with the likes of Amazon, Target, and Walmart. These companies have access to an almost infinite amount of customer data. This allows them to understand their customers and offer more tailored products and services.
AI in e-commerce is moving quickly so it's important to stay informed. The best brands use AI to build meaningful customer relationships and accelerate sales through personalized shopping experiences, incentives for repeat customers, and more.
AI in Ecommerce Trend Analysis
AI has many applications, but for ecommerce brands, it’s all about customer satisfaction. And with rising customer acquisition costs, increasing ROI is all the more important.
Today, the impact of AI on e-commerce cannot be overstated. For example, it allows for superior product recommendations and customer service while saving time and money. An estimated 62% of consumers prefer using a chatbot over waiting for a human, demonstrating the importance of AI in customer service.
For operations and logistics teams, AI can improve sales forecasts. So when Black Friday or summertime shopping is over, you're left with more revenue instead of dead stock.
Many brands use AI personalization tools to support a sales strategy. You can think of an AI personalization platform like Rebuy as a personal sales assistant for every shopper, working round the clock. Simply put, offering personalized shopping experiences can compel customers to shop more often (and buy higher-ticket items).
Advantages of AI in E-commerce
Here are a few advantages you'll enjoy when you implement AI on your Shopify store.
Revenue Optimization
Tactics like data-driven recommendations, smart upsells, and clever down-sells help you increase how much customers spend at your store. Gifts, discounts, and more encourage conversions at every touchpoint. Customers will be more satisfied, and your finance department will be thrilled to see a bigger bottom line.
Efficiency
One of the biggest selling points of AI is that it does the work for you. While it can't do it all, AI in ecommerce can help you move faster and diagnose problems more efficiently. Using AI to answer customer questions via chatbots, provide product recommendations, initiate returns and exchanges, and manage support tickets are all great ways to increase efficiency.
Customer Loyalty
People don't care what you know until they know how much you care. Prompt communication paired with AI personalization can signal to a customer they are important to you. What's more, AI’s data analysis capabilities help you understand what your shoppers want before they ask for it. Think Netflix's Because You Watched and We Think You'll Love playlists or Spotify’s personalized DJ and Made for You playlists.
Disadvantages of AI in E-commerce
These challenges are worth considering before implementing AI for your brand.
Tricky to Implement
Technology is hard. Building a robust AI-powered system from scratch requires extensive research, development, and testing. It requires expert developers, a commitment to ongoing maintenance and security, and other valuable resources to get it right.
Mishandled Customer Interactions
While chatbots can handle a lot, we’ve all had bad experiences with them. AI support isn't flawless. So you need a good escalation strategy to ensure shoppers aren’t left out to dry.
Trust & Safety
Your customers’ data should be one of the most protected pieces of your business. Integrating with other technologies and platforms increases the risk of leaks.
Implementation of AI in E-commerce for Shopify
Although AI in ecommerce can seem overwhelming, using AI to fuel business growth is easier than you think. Shopify is on the cutting edge of technology, always supporting merchants with the latest developments and helping with AI in ecommerce implementation. For instance, Shopify Magic and Shopify Sidekick boast plenty of AI features to enhance your site. They help you enhance images, get expert business advice, and more. (Use them together with Rebuy's AI-powered growth tools to see how easy using AI in ecommerce can be.)
Best practices
Here are some best practices to follow along with a few examples of AI in e-commerce.
Be Selective
You may feel overwhelmed by the growing number of AI tools available today, and that’s okay. It’s a lot. When deciding which AI tools to use for your business, think about whether it’s a genuine need. Some tools are nice to have. Others are an absolute necessity if you want to compete.
Also, make sure that the platform has a strong support team that can help you with implementation. Look for a support team with a network of agency and freelance partners who can offer extra help when you need it.
Popular nutrition brand Bare Performance Nutrition started by manually selecting every cross-sell on their site. Every recommendation was based on gut instinct rather than data. Without the power of AI, the brand missed out on delivering relevant offers to its customers. Using manual recommendations also required time and bandwidth to set up and manage. So they implemented an AI-powered personalization platform. The result? The AOV (average order value) for AI-influenced offers was 18% higher than offers chosen by hand. What's more, 25% of orders used included an AI-powered add-on.
Slow Down to Speed Up
Technology moves fast, but that doesn’t mean you have to. It’s best to focus on integrating one software and maximizing its capabilities rather than trying to master many tools overnight.
For example, you could start by testing an out-of-the-box AI solution. That's what children’s retailer SpearmintLOVE did. The brand switched from BigCommerce to Shopify and, rather than building a solution in-house, they tested out Rebuy’s personalization platform. This allowed the company to personalize the shopping experience for every customer. Using nothing but Rebuy's default AI algorithms, SpearmintLOVE's average order value increased by over 11%.
SpearmintLOVE liked what they saw. Today, the brand continues to test and optimize, dialing in the best experience for its shoppers.
Measure Non-Obvious Results
To know if an AI tool is valuable for your business or not, you need to track the metrics. Even non-obvious ones.
Licorice.com, an online candy retailer with no developers on the team, added AI to its merchandising strategy. AOV soared by over 17%. But equally important was the time saved. As its company president explained, “It would have taken us hundreds of hours of dev-work to do. But we just plugged in Rebuy and we were good to go."
Pro Tip: Anytime you introduce a new tool, ensure it either increases revenue, decreases expenses, or saves time.
Future Prospects and Advice
AI is transforming the ecommerce industry and is here to stay. Every day, savvy brands use it to create personalized shopping experiences, accelerate sales, and improve efficiency.
But, it’s best not to go from 0 to 100 too soon. The best way to incorporate AI into your business is to do so carefully and systematically. Identify the biggest pain points you’re currently facing. It may be high customer acquisition costs, low retention rates, or stagnant sales. Then, find the right tools to solve them.
Conclusion: Shopify Ecommerce Tips
The future is here. Founders must understand how AI can benefit their brands. So, how can business owners use AI in ecommerce to optimize revenue? Here are two quick tips to get you started.
First, do a merchandising audit of your Shopify store. This handy merchandising audit checklist will help you identify revenue-generating opportunities across your entire shop.
Second, gather and use customer data. According to Tony Castillo, CRO director at The Maze Group, “The best insights for optimizing revenue will come from your primary source of revenue: the customer.”
Finally, always be testing. The data you analyze will help you know which shopping experiences your customers prefer.
If you're looking to use AI personalization to grow on Shopify, consider Rebuy’s growing lineup of no-code and low-code tools like Smart Cart™, Smart Search, and A/B testing. Try Rebuy free for 21 days and transform your basic online store into an intelligent shopping experience.
