5 Ways Machine Learning Can Boost Ecommerce Sales

If you’re looking to make the most of the latest ecommerce trends and stay ahead of competitors, you may be keen to learn more about machine learning for ecommerce. Through improved search, online customer service, recommended products and more, machine learning can help you create an exceptional site experience and increase conversion.

This article explores some of the latest and greatest ways in which machine learning can be utilized for ecommerce.

What is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence enables machines to complete tasks that usually call for human intelligence. In a sense, machine learning takes the human idea of “practice makes perfect” and applies it to machines, which can effectively learn and improve through experience.

Searchandizing

Combining merchandising tactics with search, searchandizing can help your customers find the products they need more efficiently.

Why is Search so Important?

According to Econsultancy, site search is likely to be used by 30% of visitors to your site, and those that do use site search are 50% more likely to convert.

Customers using search are high value, as it suggests significant intent to make a purchase. By helping your customers find what they’re looking for and going above and beyond to make relevant search suggestions, searchandizing can improve conversion.

How Can Machine Learning Improve Site Search?

Advanced search tools can enable you to boost and bury results, display products based on synonyms and show customers related products based on the keywords used.

Mimicking human intelligence, machine learning enables search results to improve with time and use by analyzing patterns and human behavior. As customer use provides more data, your search results will become more relevant. Data may include conversion rate, star ratings, and more. Behavioral models can be used to determine why a purchase is being made. If wedding invitations are purchased, this might suggest that other wedding products are relevant to this consumer. This process can enable personalization, and help your customers find products that will appeal to them, without specifically searching for them.

Recommended Products

Similarly to providing improved search results, recommended products based on machine learning can be beneficial to customers and ecommerce retailers. Recommended products are often appreciated by customers that are not quite sure what they are looking for. How many times have you been looking for the perfect gift but kept finding items that just weren’t right? Machine learning can make online shopping more convenient, by suggesting recommended products to customers, based on data.  Next time you settle down to watch your favorite Netflix show, think back, who recommended this to you? A friend, or a friendly algorithm? When it comes to machine learning for ecommerce, product recommendations are a great way to boost sales.

Chatbots

Through machine learning, chatbots can offer superior customer service online. Chatbots use natural language to interact with customers, helping them to find products, answer questions and more. Users can typically type to chatbots, expecting a quick and convenient response.

Benefits of Using Chatbots

• Chatbots enable your users to serve themselves and find what they need without calling your customer service line.
• According to Invesp, chatbots can answer up to 80% of commonly asked questions, enabling many companies to reduce customer support costs.
• Chatbots use machine learning to help users. The more they are used, the more they learn and the better they get.

Fraud Protection

Customers are embracing the use of technology to shop online, but for many consumers, it is not without apprehension. Consumers of all ages are aware of the threat of online fraud.

According to Signal Sciences, each month, the average retailer running a medium to large ecommerce business will experience 206,000 web attacks.

Shopping online should be quick, convenient, and safe. Machine learning can help you protect your customers against fraud by analyzing behavior and recognizing fraudulent transactions. Providing your customers with a safer space to shop online can encourage existing customers to return to your ecommerce store, who in turn may tell others that they use and trust your site.

Dynamic Pricing

It is possible to use machine learning for ecommerce to optimize pricing, enabling prices on your website to change dynamically. With dynamic pricing, how much a product costs may be dependent on the time and day that the user is viewing the product, customer data, product demand and more. Amazon is leading the way using dynamic pricing to secure sales.

Why is Dynamic Pricing Important?

• With dynamic pricing, you can offer your customers the best price and secure more sales.
• It is much more quick and convenient to compare prices online than in store. While many customers might not spend the time shopping around in person, they’re likely to set aside a few minutes to check competitor pricing online. 
• Dynamic pricing can incentivize customers to shop with you now rather than waiting to browse elsewhere.

Finding a Platform to Enable Machine Learning

Finding the right platform that can support machine learning can make a huge difference to how well you can provide for your customers and boost ecommerce sales. ROC Commerce is an innovative platform that makes the most of machine learning for ecommerce to offer market-leading search. Search results can be tuned for segments or individual users. Contact ROC Commerce today to learn more.