The Future of AI in eCommerce: How AI is Revolutionizing eCommerce, Key Trends and Insights

In the two and a half years since AI came crashing into our lives, it's becoming increasingly clear that artificial intelligence may very well prove to be one of the biggest technological leaps of our lifetimes. There are virtually no remaining industries yet untouched by AI; everything from medicine to art has been affected, as has the world of online selling and ecommerce. In fact, ecommerce, as a major market that operates in the virtual realm, has arguably been affected more significantly than most by the AI boom. In fact, the ecommerce industry was one of the first to adopt the tech for everything from customer service to listing optimization.

Despite its short history, the effects of AI in ecommerce have been extensive, and there will undoubtedly be many more innovative ways to implement AI into even more aspects of online selling as the technology progresses. In this article, we'll understand how AI is being used in today by the ecommerce industry, go over the changes AI implementation has brought about, and explore how to use AI in ecommerce as a small- to medium-sized ecommerce seller. Keep reading for an overview of AI in ecommerce, and discover how you can start using ecommerce today to get more out of your online selling business.

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Key Takeaways on AI in Ecommerce for Sellers

• Content Creation: One of AI's best use cases in ecommerce, AI-powered LLMs are able to create optimized, engaging, and unique content instantly, saving sellers countless hours and costs on keyword research and content creation.
• Pricing Optimization: With access to a wealth of pricing data at its virtual fingertips, AI can optimize product pricing based on a practically endless series of variables, including demand, locale, seasonality, and more.
• Image Generation: AI has democratized a variety of digital trades, and one of them is product photography. AI gives sellers the ability to create stunning product images – no special equipment or expertise required. Using AI tools, you can quickly and easily showcase items in a variety of scenarios without having to physically stage them in front of the camera, professionally edit photos, and even use AI to generate images of the product variants you sell without having to take a photo of each one.
• Predictive Analytics: One of the major strengths of AI is collecting and processing large amounts of data, and utilizing that data to predict behaviors and trends before they happen. In ecommerce, this power is best utilized for predictive analytics, in which AI analyzes data on everything from inventory to sales and helps sellers make smarter, data-driven decisions for their business.
• Customer Service: AI has been implemented into every aspect of customer service, and for good reason – AI excels at getting customer queries resolved, without the customer ever feeling like they're not communicating with a real person. Aside from directly communicating with customers, however, AI also makes it easier for actual customer service agents to do their job with tools like ticket summaries and response message proofreading.

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How AI is Revolutionizing Ecommerce

AI is a powerful tool, and since its launch has revolutionized every aspect of ecommerce. From driving more efficient content creation for better listings to enabling smarter management of catalogs and inventories, AI has skyrocketed the selling potential of sellers all over the globe by offering them a revolutionary new way of tackling some of their most persistent and complex selling challenges. In this section, we'll discuss some of the main applications of AI in ecommerce as they pertain to ecommerce sellers specifically, and understand how they can make the process of online selling more efficient – and more profitable.

1. Content Creation and SEO:

Two of AI's strong suits – content creation and data analytics – converge in an incredibly potent way for ecommerce sellers, allowing them to use AI to create large volumes of keyword-optimized content to improve their SEO, whether they're selling on classic marketplaces like Etsy or catalog-based marketplaces like Walmart. With AI-powered tools like those available through EasyChannel, sellers can easily create:

• Product Titles: Generate a selection of keyword-optimized, flawlessly structured titles to help product listings perform and rank better in buyer searches.
• Product Descriptions: Create unique product descriptions rich in organically implemented keywords, and boost both buyer engagement and SEO performance.
• Bullet Points: Bullet points are an integral part of many marketplace listings, and are crucial to mastering the algorithm. AI can generate optimized bullet points that are tailored to each marketplace's needs and specifications.
• Translations: AI can instantly expand your reach to global markets with smart product page translations that create optimized, localized content for customers from all over the world.

EasyChannel's built-in AI ecommerce tools can do all this and more, enabling sellers to create SEO-optimized listings for every sales channel and every market.

2. Pricing Optimization:

AI's ability to aggregate and analyze large amounts of data makes it an essential tool for advanced pricing optimization. AI can monitor pricing across a variety of sales platforms and regions in real time, and analyze the data it collects to give sellers smart insights about pricing trends, then suggest and implement up-to-the-minute price optimizations for products. AI repricing has the ability to not only take into account a wealth of price data – it can also utilize its robust predictive capabilities when determining the optimal price for an item at any given time, so ecommerce sellers can enjoy better profit margins across the board.

3. Promoted Listings and Ads:

AI is not just handy for ecommerce sellers, it's also a valuable and widely used tool by ecommerce marketplaces. One of the main applications of AI among online marketplaces is in promoted listings and ads, and it has completely revolutionized the way paid ads perform by optimizing them from start to finish.

AI is used to optimize ad targeting through better audience segmentation, and can determine the best converting ad/promoted listing placements with its advanced A/B testing capabilities, and all that is before we even talk about the use of AI in ad creation. Furthermore, AI is used to optimize ad bidding for sellers, and even improve keyword suggestions for sellers running PPC campaigns, making it an integral part of promoted listings and ads.

4. Image Generation:

In the past year, AI has made leaps and bounds in the realm of image generation. But AI can be used to do more than generate Ghibli-style images from existing photographs, however; its image generation and editing capabilities enable sellers to do virtually all product-image-related tasks themselves in-house, saving hundreds if not thousands of dollars on professional equipment and third-party services. Some key AI-powered image editing features include:

• Background Removal: AI can easily and quickly neaten up images with background removal, making even the most amateur pictures look like professional product photos. In fact, some marketplaces, such as Amazon and Walmart, go so far as to require product images to have a plain white background.
  
  Sellers using EasyChannel to list and sell on multiple marketplaces can use the built-in AI image background remover tool to remove the backgrounds from their product images in bulk, saving time and enabling them to instantly crosslist to marketplaces that require background-free images.
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• Image Enhancement: One of AI's more advanced image editing capabilities, image enhancement was once relegated to the realm of science fiction. Today, image enhancement is possible through the power of AI, and it has many applications in the world of ecommerce. One of the main applications of AI image enhancement in ecommerce is creating professional product images that showcase small details and texture to give shoppers a better experience when zooming in on product images.
• Image Editing: Image editing encompasses a wide range of actions, and AI today has the ability to all types of image editing. From color correction to enhancements, fixing poor lighting to eliminating noise, background removal to generating completely new backgrounds for fully virtual staging, AI can do it all.

5. Predictive Analytics:

Just like with pricing optimization, AI's ability to collect and analyze large volumes of data quickly enable it to produce accurate, data-based analytics for every aspect of online selling. From monitoring markets and spotting up-and-coming trends to analyzing inventory to enable sellers to make better decisions regarding their next supplier purchase order, AI helps sellers make smarter, data-driven decisions about every facet of their online business. AI's predictive analytics capabilities can even be used to forecast consumer behaviors, empowering sellers to make smarter, more informed decisions when it comes to things like shop and product page layouts, advertising, sales, and more. In short, AI's predictive analytics capabilities use real data and advanced modeling to help sellers spend less while earning more.

6. Customer Service:

Despite garnering a bad rap due to low-quality chatbots that claim to use AI, actual AI has a wide range of impressive applications when it comes to customer service. Some of the most ones include:

• AI-generated responses: Response templates are a great way to save time and clear your support inbox by having templates ready to go for common queries. Before AI, however, customers usually knew they were getting canned replies, and they did not appreciate it.
  With AI, you can generate tailored replies that are unique to each customer message, and respond to customers just as quickly as you would with templates without actually having to use templates. This keeps customers happy without having to spend extra time and effort crafting specialized replies, allowing sellers to save time without compromising on customer satisfaction.
• Summarization Tools: Customer messages have context in the form of order, tracking, and communication history, and this context matters when you need to respond to customer messages. Getting caught up can take a while, but AI can shorten the time it takes to get caught up on all the relevant details significantly by generating concise ticket summaries. These summaries can help sellers and their support agents save time and provide better support to their customers, since they also help ensure that no important details fall through the cracks.
• Translations: Selling to buyers around the globe is a great way to expand your reach, but international selling is not without its challenges, the majority of which stem from language barriers. With AI, sellers can provide international customers with dedicated support in their own language, without having to hire a native speaker or resorting to outdated translation tools. AI helps facilitate communication across language barriers, making it that much easier to sell to customers all around the globe and multiply your selling potential.

Sellers who use EasyChannel to manage their ecommerce businesses can enjoy all of these AI-powered customer service tools through EasyChannel's Helpdesk!

7. Catalog Management:

Last but not least, AI makes product catalog management easier in several ways, and can even help increase sales through smarter product data management.

• Automatic Product Categorization:
  Categorizing products correctly is a crucial part of online selling. It's essential for SEO, since virtually all marketplace algorithms rely on a product's assigned category (among other variables) to match it with buyer searches, and it's important for getting the best results out of promoted listings. Unfortunately, product categorization is not always straightforward, and even when it is, it can be a very tedious process, especially for sellers who sell on multiple channels.
  
  Today, sellers can leverage AI to help them make better product categorization decisions. This shortens the amount of time spent on the item listing process, thus significantly shortening workflows while also ensuring that products are assigned the most accurate and optimal categories for success. With EasyChannel, sellers can automate this process altogether, saving even more time while still getting the most out of their product listings.
• Using AI Prompts to Enhance Product Data:
  AI can save ecommerce sellers a lot of time when it comes to product data optimization. It has the ability to search the web for product specifications, as well as use information to create new product attribute values to comply with various marketplace requirements.
  
  With EasyChannel, sellers can easily access these powerful capabilities with a simple interface that allows them to create custom bulk actions to optimize their product data and tailor it for every marketplace. With EasyChannel's built-in AI prompt interface, all sellers have to do to automatically create and update custom product data fields is write out instructions in plain English. For best results, they can utilize existing attributes as needed in their prompt, so AI knows to use them when generating new attribute values.

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How to Implement AI in Your Ecommerce Business

As we've seen, AI has a selection of powerful applications in ecommerce. It streamlines everything from ad buying to inventory management, enables sellers to make better, more data-driven choices with the help of predictive analytics, and even helps them make the most of every sale with flawlessly optimized pricing.

Until recently, however, many of AI's capabilities were inaccessible to the majority of ecommerce sellers. Getting from AI prompt to automatically generated and populated custom product attributes requires more than just ChatGPT, of course, which is why listing tools like EasyChannel are a game changer for online sellers who want to start using AI in their ecommerce business. EasyChannel not only makes AI accessible to online sellers for a variety of applications such as customer service, product data management, SEO, and product image optimization – its AI ecommerce tools are tailored specifically for multichannel selling thanks to our many years of practical experience with myriad marketplaces, shopping carts, and social selling channels. EasyChannel knows what sellers need to succeed, which is why its AI applications not only sound nice in theory, but actually help ecommerce sellers sell better in practice.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Using AI in Ecommerce

Still unsure if using AI in your ecommerce business is worth it? Check out these frequently asked questions from ecommerce sellers who are considering making the switch!

Q: What are some common misconceptions about AI in ecommerce?

Among many ecommerce sellers, there is a perception that using AI in their ecommerce workflows will lead to lower quality results. This misconception stems from an incorrect association between AI and the many automation tools marketed to ecommerce sellers over the years, each promising a simple fix to a complex problem, with widely varying degrees of success. AI differs from these previous tools in one fundamental way – it's capable of learning and adapting to the needs of its users.

But AI's dynamic capabilities can not only be implemented across virtually all parts of the ecommerce selling workflow – it delivers results that are far superior than any other tool to date, and does it far more efficiently. Its ability to adapt its results based on instructions, combined with an unparalleled capacity for data processing and analytics, make AI an indispensable tool in today's ecommerce landscape.

Q: How can AI help me improve my product listings?

AI's ability to collect and process data make it an incredibly useful tool that can help ecommerce sellers improve and optimize their product listings for better visibility and conversion.

For starters, AI can be used to create SEO optimized product listing content such as product titles, descriptions, and bullet points, thereby eliminating the need for manual keyword research and content creation. AI can also instantly translate listings to new languages better than traditional translation tools, so sellers can expand their reach with localized listings that convert. Furthermore, AI's data monitoring and processing capabilities enable it to monitor product prices and optimize them for maximum profit, making it an integral part of all successful repricing tools today. AI also has the ability to generate and optimize images, so sellers can create professional product images without needing to hire professional product photographers or editors, saving valuable time and money without compromising on listing image quality.

Q: How much does it cost to implement AI in my ecommerce business?

eCommerce sellers who sell on multiple channels can access an array of powerful AI ecommerce tools through EasyChannel's Business Plan, starting at just $79 per month. This monthly subscription includes an AI-integrated toolbox designed for online sellers, with emphasis on multichannel selling that gives sellers everything they need to succeed on any platform they choose to sell on.