Growth of Artificial Intelligence in Magento

The idea of cannibalizing Artificial Intelligence in our day to day activities is not a far-fetched one anymore. AI is already touching many facets of our daily lives and without even realizing, we are relying on it more and more with each passing day.

Whether it is Virtual assistants in your smartphones like Google Now and Siri, Smart Home devices or Smart Cars, AI is seemingly making old ways old faster than we were expecting.

The idea behind the research and development of Artificial Intelligence has always been based on the following:

• Understanding end user’s behavioral patterns, emotions, and barriers.
• Analyzing the data automatically through Artificially Intelligent programs.
• Facilitating quiet but meaningful solutions for users to achieve their goals much more easily without any human intervention.

The same holds true in the world of E-commerce where there is virtually endless user data to be managed and interpreted to generate ground breaking results.

E-commerce giant Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos termed AI as:

“It’s the fuel towards Amazon’s E-Commerce success and the changes ushered in by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t.”

Talking about E-Commerce, among Alexa’s top 1 million E-commerce stores, around 19% are powered by Magento, easily making it the most used E-commerce CMS around the world.

With this magnitude of market share, Magento has long been a buzzword for developers looking to create Artificially Intelligent E-commerce solutions. Magento users can already find various AI driven tools and extensions for setting up a more personal E-commerce experience for each user. Investments in AI startups is at an all-time high and the future of Magento has never looked better.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Magento

1.      Targeted Consumer Experience

Considered as a groundbreaking implementation of Artificial intelligence in Magento are purchase assistants that target the right users, with the right messages at the right time. A human being will find it next to impossible if he is asked to manage and give personal suggestions to even a handful of customers based on their behavioral and historical data.

However, powered by Machine learning and cognitive computing, AI programs can rely on self-learning algorithms to deconstruct Bigdata of thousands of customers and create targeted user experiences, hence ruling out any human-bias or error.

2.      Context based search

The most integral part of an E-commerce store is the Product Search functionality. The Search bar is the first place a customer looks for when he is looking for a specific product, and while Magento features some impressive Search extensions, they might be nothing as compared to the effectiveness of AI powered searches.

Reason being, usual searches relies on the Keywords entered by the user and only when there is a correct match, your searches will dish out the right search results.

On the other hand, AI based search will look for the context of the search rather than totally be relying on the keywords. Utilizing the capabilities of NLP (Natural Language Process) to compute words, AI based searches will generate more relevant search results as they will generate results based on the context of the search term rather than the keywords in it.

3.      Virtual Purchase Assistant

Purchase Assistants are something that is still not fully released yet but store managers can expect it to see sooner than later.

You can expect it to analyses and monitor E-commerce store for upcoming deals, change in prices, a launch of a new product. In addition to this, these assistants will actually be able to add the products to the cart and perform the checkout process on your behalf if you have shown interest in a product and given instructions to your AI powered purchase assistant.

Combined with Magento, these Purchase assistants can very well take over traditional newsletters and deal alert emails by pushing real time information through push notifications and even perform purchases on behalf of the shoppers so they never lose a deal.

4.      Visual search

An average shopper usually carries his cell phone through the most part of his day, and one of the most useful features of a cell phone in this era is its camera. Even a budget smartphone can take great photos allowing users to take a snap anytime anywhere. With AI, this ability is all set to be exploited for E-commerce and users will soon be able to click images and search for the same or similar products instantly.

Google’s assistant is already able to determine the object, person, animal or location in the image with great precision and don’t be surprised if you see similar capabilities in E-commerce store for product searches.

5.      Fraud detection and prevention

While E-commerce has proven to be a revolutionary development for Retail businesses for expanding their outreach, online fraud and theft have been its major blemishes.

Different channels – Desktop, mobile, Social commerce,  and business lines present new risk vectors – fraud through remote channels is up to 7 times as difficult to prevent as an in-person fraud.

Combining the Magento’s security standards with machine learning we can address multiple business challenges that are time-consuming and expensive. Some of which includes:

• Reducing manual review queues through fast iterating machine models.
• Easily adapting to new business lines using experiential data.
• Augment human decision-making with increased precision.
• Reduce false positives with behavior analysis.

6.      Customer Support

Machine learning and ability to build experiential data using Neural networks also allows AI Bots to provide effective and 24*7 Customer support solutions that are not only cost effective but can resolve issues much faster than a human brain.

According to Daniel Hong Senior Product Marketing Director at [24]/7,

“Front-end AI-powered chatbot” agents handle first-level queries such as FAQs. By automating responses to basic customer queries, chatbots decrease agent handle time (AHT) by 10 percent or more. They also help reduce issue escalation to higher-cost support, increase first contact resolution (FCR) rates, and decrease agent training time for basic tasks that can be handled by chatbots.”

Top companies that have incorporated Chatbot in their support services include:

1.    Bank of America (BofA)

Last year, the company announced Erica, a voice- and text-enabled chatbot for BofA customers. Erica will use artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and cognitive messaging to help customers make payments, check balances, save money and pay down debt.

2.    JPMorgan Chase

Considered as the largest U.S. bank, JPMorgan Chase recently launched COIN, a bot capable of analyzing complex legal contracts faster and more efficiently than human lawyers can.

3.    Capital One

In March, Capital One launched Eno, a text based chatbot that helps customers manage their money using their smartphone.

4.    MasterCard

MasterCard utilizes Facebook Messenger’s Chatbot using which their customers can access their accounts through one of the world’s leading messaging apps.

Top AI based Magento extensions available right now

1.       Chloe AI by Sundown AI

Chloe, allows shoppers to get instant assistance for any service or product. The extension works for different screen sizes and is fully mobile compatible as well. Chloe uses patented technology that enables it to process the customer service data of the E-commerce store and then identify specific policies that then guide her behavior automatically.

Whenever there is any support request, Chloe’s policy graphs and machine learning algorithms optimise outcomes so that she can efficiently resolve any outstanding issues for the customer.

2.       Visual Recommendations by Vue.ai

Apptha (Magento’s largest extension provider) has partnered with Vue.ai – The Visual Recommendation System for Fashion eCommerce to come up with AI driven Visual recommendations that can increase visitors into customers at an exceptional rate.

The extension is specifically built for Magento powered fashion stores and can be configured to target customers with relevant products that the customer is most expected to purchase.

Not only is it a great way to generate more sales, it is extremely easy to setup, even if you operate a Multi-store channel.

3.       Choice AI

Choice AI is another recommendation engine for Magento which automates personalized shopping for shoppers.

Choice boasts of a global category graph which allows it to adapt itself as per the shopping store’s vertical. The tool knows what works for shoppers in your vertical.

Some Key features of Choice AI include:

• Ability to discover key features on each product and recommending those to shoppers to push them along to a purchase.
• Visual product feature search.
• Contextual pop ups and triggers.
• Email automation with MailChimp, SendGrid, Klaviyo and more.
• Neuromarketing nudges.

4.       SearchSpring site search and navigation

SearchSpring is a subscription based extension which is worth every penny for a Magento store.

Leveraging the power of machine learning and behavioral understanding algorithms to recognize the context and intent of your shoppers to generate the most relevant search results for your customers.

Some of the key features include:

• Intelligent Site search
• Category navigation
• Dynamic Auto complete.
• Dynamic product recommendations.
• Intuitive merchandising suite.
• Effectual Insights suite.

According to Gartner,
85% of interactions with a customer will be handled without a human by 2020 and by the end of 2018, faces and voices of customers will be recognized by digital assistants. AI is creating a unique customer experience that so far has only been achieved by bricks and mortar stores.

E-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay and Alibaba have already begun to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence and if you are planning to or currently use Magento for your E-commerce ventures, this is the right time to also consider the ways of how AI can be used to amplify your business and stay one step ahead of your competitors.

Looking for consultation on how AI can be used in your Magento store? Get in touch with us to Hire Magento developer and discover how Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning can bolster your Magento store.