Never in the history of eCommerce, have we seen so many new developments like now. Thanks to AI’s capability to constantly improve, the race to find innovative applications is more intense than ever. Recently, Amazon released two complex AI-driven tools – the Shopping Guides and the Rufus assistant – and by the way we know the eCommerce industry, many will follow suit. The next few months promise to redefine how we shop online. It’s not just about finding products – it’s about smart assistance guiding you every step of the way.

We’re experts in eCommerce development services and we’re here to help you choose the right solution for your business.

Please contact us

Amazon has long been an innovator in the eCommerce landscape, particularly when it comes to integrating AI-driven tools. Launched in the late 1990’s, their groundbreaking product recommendation algorithms, which analyze browsing habits, purchase history, and preferences, have set the standard for personalized online shopping experiences ever since. Today, this recommendation engine drives a significant portion of Amazon’s sales – about 35%.

This innovation paved the way for the newly launched Shopping Guides, a feature that helps users explore product categories and find recommendations based on detailed insights, making shopping more informed and efficient. In addition, Rufus is a generative AI assistant that answers shopping-related queries, helping customers compare products and get recommendations. It even assists with specific product details like price changes and user reviews.

These releases are highly important not only for Amazon, which will of course continue to dominate the eCommerce industry, but for the whole ecosystem in general, because just as, in the last years, product recommendations became widely available to the masses through the development of various third-party platforms, the same will happen with advancements in guided shopping. 

For a monthly fee, online shops will be able to integrate smart platforms that will help them offer a more human-centric experience, focusing on seamless and informed buying choices, much like what you’d expect from a guide in your local store. So, in the following lines, let’s see what benefits these could bring to online retail.

The Key Benefit: A More Personalized and Efficient Shopping Experience

Online shopping has many perks – it is convenient, it offers a larger variety of products and at the same time, its reduced operating costs often translate into cheaper prices than brick and mortar counterparts. But the elephant in the room has always been the lack of personal interactions. Most of the time, you’re on your own and the existence of a chatbot that is trained to answer only general questions surely doesn’t help. That’s why a great number of customers – elderly people, people with impairments – don’t choose it as their preferred way of shopping.

These new advancements are transforming the way customers interact with eCommerce platforms. Take Amazon’s Shopping Guides for example. If you are looking for running shoes, the feature will simply lead you to find what you are looking for, with ease. Are you looking for comfort, durability, or performance? Whatever it is, the AI powered shopping guide will be able to summarize the competing products and show prospective customers the ones that meet their criteria best. They also analyze a shopper’s browsing habits, past purchases, and preferences, making the experience seem like the help of a well trained store assistant who, at the same time, knows your preferences very well.

Another benefit is the fact that this tailored guidance significantly reduces decision fatigue. Scrolling through hundreds of products, not knowing what suits their need, is one of the prevalent reasons why clients leave the pages and sometimes, shopping carts altogether. In contrast, if the platform supports a clean, seamless journey by offering spot-on product suggestions, clear comparisons, and answers to specific questions at the right time, their satisfaction and trust naturally increases.

A store like this will make customers want to stay more and spend more, if they are presented with relevant related choices.

Platforms Offering AI-Powered Shopping Guides

Amazon is indeed a trailblazer when it comes to smart shopping guiding, but we do believe that it won’t take long until third-party platforms will be able to offer the same functionalities. At the moment, however, there aren’t many.

The AI-powered Shopping Assistant from Shopdev is well regarded, and it can easily connect with major eCommerce platforms like Magento, Shopware or Shopify using APIs or custom extensions.

The platform seamlessly guides customers through the purchasing process. By using AI algorithms, Shopdev offers personalized recommendations based on search history and preferences, it has a powerful tool that detects objects to differentiate between products and excels in product discovery.

What’s Next for AI Guided Shopping?

Guided shopping is indeed an amazing capability, and as AI evolves, with algorithms increasingly using customer data to offer more relevant product recommendations, the feature has the potential to become even better. One direction is  hyper-personalization, where these guides could evolve into virtual personal shoppers that understand users on a deeper level.

Another development is the integration of voice and visual search capabilities, where these guides will be able to respond to voice commands in natural, usual language. Similarly, visual recognition technology could make everything more intuitive, as customers will be able to upload images of the products they are interested in, leaving it to the AI assistant to find exact or similar items.

Lastly, one of the topics that fills the calendar of many eCommerce platforms is offering complex omnichannel integrations. As much as online retail is seen as the future, one thing is certain – offline will still exist many years from now. The smart Shopping Assistants of the future could help consumers across different retail channels—online and offline. For example, a customer could interact with the guide via a smartphone while in a physical store, receiving recommendations based on the store’s inventory and their online behavior.

If you want to know more about our list of services at Clever++, please visit our website.

Visit our website