AI in eCommerce: How AI Technology Like ChatGPT Is Changing the Game

Artificial intelligence is a hot buzzword in 2023, largely thanks to the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

People are using AI for everything from job cover letters to SEO keyword research. While AI-generated content should still be reviewed by a human, it can certainly speed up the content creation process and help humans save time and hassle.

AI can help retail eCommerce businesses improve the shopper experience, stand out on search engines, minimize human error, and save a lot of time and money.

Online retailers can get value from these tools — but you need to use them for the right use cases to save the most time and money. 

The key isn’t to use AI just for the sake of it but to generate tangible value for your business.

There have been a lot of changes in AI and artificial intelligence in eCommerce over the last 90 days, and it will continue to change. 

Check out this guide to learn how AI works and three new use cases for incorporating AI in eCommerce.

How Natural Language Processing Works for the eCommerce Industry

AI needs to mine information from a large amount of source material to work properly. The good news is that it’s a machine, so it can quickly process a lot of information at once.

For example, ChatGPT is built off of data gleaned from the public internet, which is why it can quickly create quality content about nearly any topic under the sun. 

Artificial intelligence also uses natural language processing (NLP) to help interpret human language faster.

It’s the reason why you can tell ChatGPT to adopt a certain tone, attitude, or perspective, and the AI can create content that fits the brief.

For example, natural language processing allows ChatGPT to interpret an input like “Create a funny script about grocery shopping” and create a viable output that mimics human humor. 

Machine learning algorithms enable AI to spot patterns and get even better at solving problems.

This is the reason why AI becomes more intelligent the more people use it. This technology is capable of learning and improving, which is what makes it such an exciting addition to the eCommerce industry.

How eCommerce Businesses Currently Use AI

ChatGPT opened the floodgates for AI in everything from music to TV scripts.

Since the eCommerce industry relies on content to connect with more shoppers, it’s no surprise that plenty of eCommerce businesses are investing in AI.

If you’re new to the world of AI, these use cases are currently very common applications for the eCommerce industry.

Personalized Shopping Experience

AI-powered product recommendation widgets can automatically up-sell or cross-sell to every shopper to increase your average order value.

Unlike current widgets, which rely on sellers choosing a selection of popular products to display, AI can suggest products related to the shopper’s interests or historical data. This targeted marketing makes it much more likely that a shopper will convert.

Pricing

Intelligent pricing solutions help the eCommerce industry intelligently price goods automatically.

Instead of spending your time pricing manually, you can rely on the robots to automatically adjust prices and boost revenue while protecting your margins.

Producing Ad Copy

eCommerce businesses use tools like ChatGPT to refine their advertising campaigns. All you need to do is plug in your consumer data and ask ChatGPT to write ads tailored to your audience’s pain points.

For example, you might use a prompt like, “Write ten ad variants promoting our energy drinks to overworked parents. Stay within the Google Ads 90-character limit.”

Improving Customer Interactions

Many eCommerce businesses are marrying the intelligence of AI with the convenience of chatbots to build their virtual assistants.

This isn’t a bad idea, but it’s not new. You can add a smart chatbot to your site to suggest products and guide shoppers through the checkout process more efficiently.

Overhauling Logistics

AI solutions can help you save time and money by managing customer queries and finding the most efficient ways to fulfill orders. With AI tools, you can reduce shipping times, route orders to the best fulfillment center, and even choose closer logistics options to decrease costs and wait times.

The Benefits of Embracing AI in eCommerce

As you can see, many ways exist to use AI in eCommerce. If you’re still on the fence about implementing AI, consider these four benefits of using AI tools for eCommerce stores.

Improve the Online Shopping Experience

eCommerce shoppers expect personalization, but as you probably know, it’s tough to personalize experiences for hundreds of shoppers at once.

But AI helps you create a seamless customer experience by looking at customer data like history, behavior, and past interactions to personalize emails, suggest products, and more. 

Increased Sales

Personalizing the shopper experience can help you retain shoppers and stand out in search engines. That leads to healthier sales figures. 

Save Time

AI can’t handle everything in your business, but it can automate many tasks, especially content creation. AI isn’t out for human jobs, but it can definitely make your team’s jobs easier.

Instead of asking your people to manually Photoshop images, train them on how to prompt AI image generators. Reducing the tedium can help your employees do more in less time — and even reduce the need to hire for additional roles. It’s a win all around.

Optimize Operations

You can use AI for customer interactions, but more businesses are also using it behind the scenes. Some AI solutions can parse through your eCommerce data to suggest ways to improve your business. That’s true with AI-powered pricing and demand forecasting, for example.

3 Helpful Use Cases for AI in eCommerce

eCommerce sites are using AI for everything from ad copy to smart logistics right now. But it’s time to dream bigger. 

Ready to use solutions like ChatGPT for more than blog posts? We’ve got you covered. These three helpful, out-of-the-box use cases will help you use the latest AI features to revamp your own eCommerce website.

SEO Research

It’s no secret that search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to boost your organic website traffic over time. Normally, businesses have to spend a lot of time and money using tools to find the best SEO keywords.

From there, you thoughtfully sprinkle these keywords throughout your site’s headers, subheadings, meta descriptions, alt text, and more to stand out to both shoppers and search engines.

But ChatGPT is making the keyword research process much easier. Brief the AI on your services and what you have to offer. From there, ask the AI to generate 50 keyword options (along with keyword traffic data). You’ll still need to sift through this data, but it can help trim your keyword research time.

Generating SEO-Friendly Product Descriptions

If your business sells hundreds of products online, you know how difficult it is to write original, high-quality product descriptions that both your shoppers and search engines want to read. Writing original descriptions is a must, but it can be difficult when you have dozens of products. 

With ChatGPT, you can take generic manufacturer descriptions and customize them for your shoppers or eCommerce brand.

This means you can take more generic products and tailor them to the pain points of your shoppers, specifically.

For example, if you sell battery-powered fans, you can ask ChatGPT to rewrite the product description for soccer parents looking for relief from the summer heat.

Anyone can buy a portable fan, but by niching down, you can position your brand as a leader in a specific space, which gives you a competitive advantage.

Just feed ChatGPT the generic manufacturer description that comes with your products. You can specify character limits, ask it to adjust the length of a piece, or provide essential talking points. You can also ask it to include SEO keywords so every description is optimized for both humans and search engines.

Creating Unique Product Images

Few eCommerce websites are doing this right now, but it’s a promising new frontier for AI-generated content. Instead of arranging expensive product photoshoots — or using manufacturer-provided photos that everyone has — you can generate unique product photos with AI. 

Without AI, eCommerce stores have to Photoshop products in different locations and uses. This takes a lot of time and doesn't create the most realistic results.

But with AI image tools like Firefly and Midjourney, you can provide a base image and ask the AI to put the product in a different setting. It can generate images of someone holding a Bluetooth speaker and another image of the same Bluetooth speaker in use on the beach.

Plus, the images are totally unique to your company, so you’ll have images that none of your competitors have.

Unlike ChatGPT, you do need to pay for AI image generators. But you can build high-quality photos in just minutes with these tools, so it's money well spent.

How To Introduce AI Into Your eCommerce Business

Ready to incorporate AI into your eCommerce workflow? Every business is different, but following these five steps will help you embrace AI without the growing pains.

1. Plan for the Challenges of AI

While AI sounds like a miracle, it’s certainly not infallible. There are challenges to embracing AI, and you need to be prepared for them if you want to add AI to your workflow.

Make a plan to address these challenges before adding AI to your eCommerce business.

The inputs matter

ChatGPT can only deliver what you tell it to deliver. You need to become skilled at prompting AI if you want to get high-quality results. 

The first iteration isn’t the final iteration

It’s rare for AI to generate a perfect request the first time. You’ll need to continually iterate with the AI in an ongoing conversation to get what you need. The good news is that this is generally still faster than doing the task yourself. 

Lack of customer data

You need a lot of information to train the AI. If you aren’t using big data — or customer data that’s clean enough — the AI won’t be much help to you.

Accuracy

You should never share AI-generated outputs without reviewing them first. It might sound good on the surface level, but it’s not uncommon for AI to generate inaccurate or misleading content.

2. Make a Plan

If you use AI for the fun of it, you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities. Create a strategy for using AI in your business to get value from this tool. 

First, identify a list of tasks or processes that would be a good fit for AI, like keyword research or image generation. Rank these tasks by priority and by how easy it would be to complete the task with AI. 

3. Identify One Use Case To Start

It’s tempting to use AI in every aspect of your business, but it’s best to start small. Start with a single project. This allows you to test out different tools and processes so you find what works best for your business. 

Be sure to document everything you do. Over time, that should evolve into an SOP that you can share with your team that describes how, with step-by-step instructions, they should work with AI. 

After you become confident using AI in this first use case, you can branch out to a second use case, and then a third. You’ll learn a lot along the way, so it’s best to start small and make adjustments as needed. 

4. Prepare Your Team

You don’t want your employees to think AI is coming after their jobs. If you want to add AI to your eCommerce workflow seamlessly, you need to get your team on board.

Tell them why you’re using AI and which tasks AI will do. You’ll also need to train your team on how to use AI technology — including the fine art of prompting AI — to get more value from these tools.

5. Measure the Results

AI is cool, but it needs to deliver results for your business. It isn't worth keeping around if it doesn’t save time and money or deliver a better final product.

Be sure to assess the value of AI on a monthly or quarterly basis. You might need to tweak where or how you use AI to continue seeing a return on your investment.

Simplify Online Shopping With AI for eCommerce

Businesses and consumers aren’t sure what to make of tools like ChatGPT yet. AI tools are changing quickly, meaning their use cases and benefits will also change over time.

These tools aren’t going away anytime soon, though, and businesses that leverage AI tools stand to save time, trim costs, and give online shoppers a better online shopping experience. 

Online retailers can automate a lot with AI. Let the robots take over your content and image generation while solutions like Spark Shipping optimize the logistics side of your business. 

Spark Shipping combines the power of automation and AI to help dropshippers and eCommerce retailers do more in less time.

Automate pricing, port over fitment data, map products to multiple vendors, and streamline tracking updates with our intelligent eCommerce automation tool.

If you want to spend less time on finicky order details or fulfillment tasks, this is an easy automation for finding wins in your business. 

Start saving time: Get a Spark Shipping demo now.