The Amazon Echo Show 8 smart-home device is unveiled in the course of the Amazon Devices and Services event on the HQ2 campus in Arlington, Virginia, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. Amazon.com Inc. previewed a push into generative artificial intelligence with recent features for its Alexa voice assistant. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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You could also be among the many thousands and thousands of Americans who just purchased an item in the course of the two-day Amazon Prime deals event. Did AI assist in the strategy of convincing you to spend?
Amazon said Prime members bought greater than 150 million items from third-party sellers. It didn’t release rather more data on the large retail event, and among the many things we will not know needless to say is how much generative AI programs can have helped sellers do an excellent higher job of pitching their products than in previous years.
We do know needless to say that getting a leg up on the competition is getting easier for e-commerce platform sellers through the newest AI.
Generative AI tools — offered by e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and personal corporations — can assist with a few of the more labor-intensive, time-consuming and mundane tasks that sellers are likely to hate. The goal of using these tools is to drive more sales with less effort — and angst — on the a part of sellers.
AI might be used for a lot of things, from writing impactful product listings to data analytics, but more of the main focus of late has been on the product listing side. Amazon, for instance, recently rolled out a generative AI tool to assist sellers write more robust and effective product descriptions.
A New York Times’ tech reviewer who recently tried out the newest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT which may “see, hear and speak,” said it did a excellent job of writing product listings for items he desired to sell on Meta‘s Facebook Marketplace.
These tools can “spit out the proper product listing for you that’s optimized to your customer base,” says Chris Jones, chief executive and co-founder of AMNI, an AI-powered platform that streamlines procurement, manufacturing and distribution.
It’s obviously early days in the usage of AI for e-commerce, and there will probably be some big hits and misses — in addition to risks for any seller than blindly relies on AI. Here’s what sellers have to find out about using AI to sell more effectively.
Business owners shouldn’t feel the have to be writers
Creating high-quality e-commerce content often doesn’t come naturally to sellers. There’s a have to create compelling product titles, bullet points and descriptions, which might be time-consuming and frustrating for sellers who do not have a natural writing ability or the time to devote to those efforts. It might be daunting for sellers to take a seat in front of a blank screen and determine what to jot down.
Beyond just describing they product, they should create one which’s also well-optimized for Amazon search algorithms so it gets good exposure, said Greg Mercer, chief executive and founding father of Jungle Scout, a platform that helps sellers start and scale their e-commerce business.
AI can reduce — to seconds or minutes — these mundane listing tasks that might need taken some sellers three-to-five hours to finish, Mercer said.
Amazon says it is going to save sellers effort and time
Sellers on Amazon‘s competitive third-party marketplace need to offer a temporary description of their product so as to allow its recent AI tool to generate high-quality content for them to review. For example, they’ll plug within the item name and whether the product has variations and a brand name. Amazon’s models learn to infer product information from various sources. For example, they’ll infer a table is round if specifications list a diameter. The models may infer the collar form of a shirt from its image, the corporate noted in a blog post in regards to the AI launch.
“In addition to saving sellers time, a more thorough product description also helps improve the shopping experience. Customers will find more complete product information, as the brand new technology will help sellers provide richer information with less effort,” the corporate stated.
At eBay, a picture is commonly the start line
eBay can be working on tools to auto-generate item descriptions, and a revamped image-based “magical” listing tool that leverages AI.
The tool allows sellers to take or upload a photograph within the eBay app — only available in Apple’s iOS in the meanwhile — and let AI do the work. From the start line of a photograph, the AI can write titles, descriptions and add necessary information, corresponding to product-release date, detailed category and sub-category, in keeping with an organization blog post. It may mix with eBay’s other technology to suggest a list price and shipping cost, the corporate said.
This latest version, which incorporates upgrades to a previous iteration based on customer feedback, is being tested by employees. The company said within the blog post that it expects to release the revamped tool to the general public in the approaching months.
Shopify shows how AI works for rather more than product listings
AI might be used to assist sellers with rather more than simply product listings. “Numerous people don’t consider using AI to be their CFO and analyze data for them or to assist do competitive research,” Mercer said. “AI is getting loads more powerful than simply writing product listings.”
As Harvard Business School AI guru Karim Lakhani recently said on the CNBC Small Business Playbook event that each small business owner ought to be using generative AI. “I take into consideration ChatGPT as a thought partner, lowering the fee of cognition and recent ideas,” Lakhani said.
Shopify, for instance, announced its AI tool Shopify Magic this past summer. It’s a collection of AI-enabled features integrated across the Shopify platform, and specifically designed to boost commerce, the corporate said. Merchants receive contextually-relevant support for a spread of tasks related to store constructing, marketing, customer support and back-office management.
For example, merchants can create email campaigns using just a couple of keywords. They get persuasive subject lines, appealing content and advisable send times to attain more practical click-through rates, in keeping with an organization video.
Shopify Magic also drafts custom replies for a business’s more common customer questions, allowing the merchant to review and edit the content. Those answers are then shared routinely with customers who ask questions, so a merchant doesn’t have to respond in real-time. Another feature creates blog posts for holidays, business milestones or campaign ideas — including the power to customize the tone of voice and translate the content into different languages, in keeping with a spokeswoman.
“AI creates an environment where an entrepreneur’s expertise, brand, and product can shine, and can help them take something from idea to reality much faster than previously possible,” said Miqdad Jaffer, the corporate’s director of product, in an email.
Platform-specific tools may get the perfect sales results
Some sellers use consumer-facing applications corresponding to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT from OpenAI and Google’s rival chatbot Bard — each corporations also offer business versions of the AI tools now — to assist ease the burden of making higher product listings, but e-commerce professionals said platform-specific tools could also be more practical, since they’re tailored for that individual platform.
That said, using broadly available tools — whether it’s for product listings, evaluation of customer reviews, promoting campaigns or financial reporting — would still be higher than doing it on your individual, Mercer said.
“Anything that can assist them not need [human] resources, but achieve the identical speed and scale goes to be the secret,” says Margo Kahnrose, chief marketing officer of Skai, a provider of data, insights and marketing technology.
