AI for E-Commerce: Mobile App Features that Boost Sales and User Engagement
You’ve probably come across dozens of articles, newsletters, podcasts, and other content describing artificial intelligence as some kind of a silver bullet. Nowadays, it seems like no digital tool is good enough without AI-powered features.
Although AI has become a buzzword, artificial intelligence can really be a game changer for the business if you know how to use it.
In the case of eCommerce mobile apps, features supported by AI can provide you with opportunities that improve UX, increase user engagement, and grow sales.
Find out how to make this happen.
Key takeaways
- Artificial intelligence enhances the customer experience by providing personalized, convenient, and efficient shopping experiences.
- It analyzes user data to provide tailored product recommendations, increasing engagement and sales.
- AI-powered search understands natural language and user intent, delivering more relevant search results. It may also enable users to search for products using images, simplifying the process and improving discovery.
- AI-powered chatbots provide instant customer support, answer questions, and guide users through the purchasing process.
- Algorithms using AI adjust product prices based on demand, competition, and other factors, optimizing revenue.
- AI segments customers based on demographics, behavior, and preferences, allowing for more personalized marketing and product recommendations.
- AI can also predict future trends and customer behavior, helping businesses make informed decisions about product development and marketing strategies.
AI in eCommerce apps
AI application covers many areas, but in this article, we’ll focus on its usage in the case of mCommerce apps.
Artificial intelligence technologies simulate human intelligence to perform various tasks.
Machine learning (ML) is an AI field that often proves helpful in the eCommerce sector. It relies on data and algorithms to improve specific processes without detailed instructions.
Another type of AI solution you should know is Natural Language Processing. It makes it possible, for example, to chat online with a bot that understands users and gives answers to their questions.
In short, AI can analyze available information to help you make data-driven decisions and perform actions with a high chance of increasing sales. From a user perspective, artificial intelligence can help them achieve their goals faster.
Let’s look at examples of AI solutions that can improve online shopping experiences.
Personalized product recommendations
If you want to make users more interested in your offer, you should give them propositions of products they may find attractive.
AI will display potentially interesting items thanks to ML algorithms analyzing customer data, such as:
- Search history
- Purchase history
- Most visited categories
- Products with the highest number of customer interactions
- Customer feedback
- Ads with user interactions
The system looks at the bigger picture and develops behavioral patterns to generate better recommendations. It may even consider behavior data from other users with similar preferences. Everything that enables a better understanding of the customer’s intent is useful.
As a result, the algorithm comes up with personalized propositions that arouse users’ interest. You can display them on the product view, in the cart, or on the main screen, for example. Thanks to such recommendations, it’s more likely that customers will tap on the displayed products to discover details because they have been selected especially for them, with their unique preferences in mind.
This way, the overall customer experience also improves as the app answers users’ needs and makes shopping online easier.
Benefits for business: Users spend more time in the app, browsing through the offer. They quickly find more items they like and become more interested in buying them. It boosts revenue because the average cart value increases and users make purchases more often.
More efficient customer service
Sometimes, you want to buy something, but you’re not sure what exactly you need. For example, it can be a present for your friend or a shirt for a special occasion. In such a case, an AI-powered chatbot can help you choose the right product.
Natural language processing enables bots to understand users well and answer even complex questions. Machine learning algorithms will be helpful in case of queries regarding product recommendations. AI can also reply to other sorts of requests, explaining returns policy and informing about delivery status or product details.
Moreover, such enhanced customer service works full time, even at night, and users receive answers fast, which improves UX and builds a better brand image.
Benefits for business: Thanks to AI, you don’t need to engage so many people in tasks related to customer services. It’s a cost-saving solution that enables your staff to focus on more challenging queries.
Data-driven dynamic pricing
Dynamic pricing is an approach that optimizes prices by changing them to answer the demand. You don’t know when to put your products on sale and what the new price should be? The AI will help you make the right decision.
Artificial intelligence can analyze data to determine when it’s best to lower the prices and how much. It forecasts demand and calculates how much the discount should equal to make it the most profitable for your business. It also tells you when and for how long you should offer lower prices for specific items.
Examples of data used for dynamic pricing operations
- Competitors’ prices
- Supply situation on the market
- Market trends
- Current demand, the demand in the previous period, and the same period last year
- Seasonal factors, such as holidays or similar events, changing weather conditions, etc.
- Operational expenses
Benefits for business: AI optimizes pricing based on multiple data which is safer, because the risk that you cut costs too much is decreased. Attractive prizes boost the number of conversions. On top of that, the whole process is conducted automatically, so it’s also time-efficient.
Voice search and image search
Have you ever wanted to find a specific product that required applying many filters? It’s time-consuming, and the results aren’t always satisfying. That’s when voice and image search comes to help.
If you upload a photo or a screenshot depicting the product you’re looking for, the AI system can show you similar items. Alternatively, you can use voice search to describe what you need. Both solutions are quicker and allow you to find products with minimum effort.
If you want to develop a modern eCommerce app, consider adding at least one of these search options to improve the customer experience.
Benefits for business: The ability to quickly search through the offer is essential for users of eCommerce platforms. Allowing them to use images and voice to find items will give you a competitive edge as these search options haven’t become a standard feature yet.
Notifications
It’s crucial to choose the right time and content for sending notifications. You need to increase the possibility that users will open them and go to the app.
Example
The user often visits the app in the evening hours. After a few days of absence from your online store, you can send a message about new promotions for the products on the favorites list. Customers should receive it at the time when they usually check the app to make it more likely that they will have a spare moment to read it and look at the offer.
AI tools can analyze past customer behavior to determine when it’s best to send notifications. They can also prepare user segmentation so that you can send some notifications only to specific groups of people, which should increase the open rate.
Benefits for business: You need to carefully plan the frequency of notifications, properly adjust their content to users, and choose the right sending time. Having AI do it for you makes it much easier, and the results should visibly boost user engagement in the app.
Planning product development and marketing campaigns
When creating a product roadmap, you may need AI’s forecasting capabilities.
Machine learning analyzes historical data, determines patterns, and makes predictions. Predictive analytics enables you to prepare for upcoming trends and secure yourself against potential risks.
Such a prognosis allows you to create your sales plan, including marketing campaigns and app development plan, which is handy when deciding what features are worth implementation.
Implementing AI tools in the mCommerce apps
The examples above give you a glimpse of how artificial intelligence can improve UX and drive sales. However, to see the expected results, you must know how to approach AI implementation properly.
Step 1
Ensure you’re focusing on features that are valuable to your users. Write down what business objectives you want to achieve by implementing AI-powered solutions and determine what user needs you wish to cover.
You can also run a competitor analysis to get to know the standards in the eCommerce industry. Based on that info, you can work on ideas for AI features.
Step 2
Find a mobile app development company with experience building mCommerce apps and applying AI solutions.
At Holdapp, we begin projects by analyzing your ideas to determine their feasibility and the execution cost.
We will prepare the estimation for your project to let you know how much time and money it should take to turn your ideas into reality. If you accept the conditions, we will create an initial backlog version.
If you don’t know what you need in detail, you can discuss it with our team. Together, we will brainstorm what to implement in the app.
Step 3
When ideating is done, we create the UX/UI project that meets requirements regarding usability and accessibility and is also in line with the brand’s visual guidelines.
Optionally, we can prepare a prototype and conduct usability testing with potential target customers. It lets us see if users understand how the AI features work and whether they find them useful. We will improve the project based on the results.
Example
You want to implement an AI chatbot to advise on clothes sizes. The usability testing shows that respondents are interested in checking their size but don’t know how to do it in the app. With such insights, the UX designer can make changes to the project and make a new feature more intuitive.
Step 4
If the UX/UI project is ready, the software developers take care of the integration of the AI tools, and QA testers check if the results meet the requirements we agreed on. The app development team works in iterations, so you can monitor the progress and be more flexible when planning.
Step 5
When the implementation of AI features is ready, we launch the app in stores (Google Play, App Store).
Step 6
Thanks to mobile app analytics, we can monitor the app’s performance and check how the new features impact the way people use the app. We also see what requires improvements and make necessary changes.
Limits of AI in shopping apps
Despite many benefits, AI in e-commerce also has its limitations. First of all, the quality of the generated results is as good as the data AI can access (its quality and quantity), so it must be carefully filtered. Unfortunately, sometimes, you may not have enough data to draw conclusions.
Another problem you may come upon is related to integrations. Sometimes, it can be very time-consuming or expensive to integrate specific features. In such a case, consider if the expected results are worth the effort.
Last but not least, remember that AI technologies can also make mistakes. Keep that in mind when making decisions, especially when the AI recommendations raise your concerns.
These are only some examples of the risks that AI imposes. You should analyze them with your team before deciding to add new features.
Benefits of using AI technology in eCommerce mobile apps
Successfully implemented AI features can positively impact your eCommerce business in many ways. It leads to sales growth thanks to improved user experience and customer satisfaction that increases engagement and makes discovering new products easier.
AI also reminds users about your offer in a way that makes them more eager to read your notifications, open the app, and make a purchase.
Artificial intelligence can generate customer insights that help deliver personalized shopping experiences and increase customer loyalty, on the account that you choose a strategic approach to its implementation.
Let us know if you need help with adding AI tools to your mobile app. We’ll help you build the mCommerce solution that takes your app to a whole new level.
