Embracing the AI Revolution: Leveraging Generative AI for Enhanced Conversion in Ecommerce

In today’s rapidly evolving ecommerce landscape, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly prevalent.

In our recent workshop at MACH 2 in Amsterdam, “Using Generative AI to Improve Conversion in Ecommerce,” our AI experts, ecommerce directors, and solution integrators shed light on the practicalities of adopting AI technologies within modern MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) architectures. Klevu aims to empower ecommerce businesses to leverage AI for improving customer experiences and increasing conversion rates. 

Led by Klevu CTO Niraj Aswani, Head of Partnerships EMEA Mairaid Harte, and Partnerships Manager Nordics Rasmus Holsti, this workshop explored the practicalities of adopting AI technologies within MACH architectures for optimal shopper and business user experience.

The workshop also featured Paulina Kreisinger, Copywriter Global E-Commerce at Puma, Bettina Doenmez, Senior Manager Cloud Native Platform Management and Development at Puma,  and Steve Thomas, Ecommerce Manager at Paul Smith.

Here are some key insights and discussions from the workshop, highlighting the role of AI in personalization, content generation, and localization at scale.

AI and Humans: Unleashing the Power of Collaboration

The workshop began with a question posed by Bettina Doenmez, Copywriter at Global E-Commerce, inviting participants to share their experiences of using AI in their day-to-day activities. This set the stage for a deeper exploration of the relationship between humans and machines. 

McKinsey in 2017 found that only 20% of organizations reported using AI in their businesses, but by 2022, that amount more than doubled. The World Economic Forum this year said that “AI services in the retail sector are predicted to increase from $5 billion to above $31 billion by 2028.”

Mairaid Harte, Head of Partnerships EMEA at Klevu, emphasized that while AI has the potential to replace humans in certain areas, it currently falls short in areas requiring emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and social skills. The consensus was that humans and AI should collaborate, with AI handling repetitive, data-intensive tasks, while humans contribute their unique qualities such as creativity and empathy.

The Rise of AI in Ecommerce

Niraj Aswani, CTO at Klevu, delved into the factors that have propelled the rapid growth of AI in ecommerce. He highlighted the availability of advanced processors, abundant data, global collaborations, and advancements in AI algorithms as key contributors to this phenomenon. The historical progression of AI, from keyword-based search to semantic and vector-based approaches, was also discussed. Niraj emphasized the importance of linguistic understanding in AI models, enabling connections between concepts and enhancing search results.

AI implementation in your eCommerce website is neglecting the importance of holistic integration. AI-driven features shouldn’t be treated as isolated entities. Instead, they need to be seamlessly integrated into the overall user experience, complementing and enhancing each other. 

By doing so, we can drive customer engagement, improve team efficiency, and ultimately, boost revenue. Using this approach also helps you add new services when innovations disrupt the market – like making it easy to quickly add an ecommerce AI chatbot that is already trained on your ecommerce data, and already integrated with your search and merchandising.

AI-Powered Content Generation and Personalization

The workshop touched upon the significant strides made by tech giants like Amazon and Google in search technology, including AI-driven assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant. Niraj introduced Klevu MOI, Klevu’s AI-powered personal shopping assistant, designed to replicate the offline shopping experience. 

Bettina highlighted the potential of AI in content generation, streamlining merchandising tasks, and empowering retailers to focus on the remaining 20% of the job that requires human expertise. The need for balance, data infrastructure, and human editing in AI-generated content was emphasized by Paulina Kriesinger, who leads global content creation for Puma.

Scaling Personalization with AI

The discussion turned to the importance of personalization in ecommerce and the role AI can play in achieving personalization at scale. 

Niraj emphasized the distinction between demographic and behavioral personalization, with Klevu’s focus being on the latter. He explained how Klevu’s AI algorithms, combined with third-party integrations, enable behavioral personalization based on customer behavior and intent. 

Scalability, according to Niraj, lies not just in processing vast amounts of data but also in the flexibility and modularity of the AI system, aligning with the principles of MACH architectures.

Real-World Success Stories

The workshop showcased success stories from renowned brands like Puma and Paul Smith, highlighting their experiences with AI implementation. Steve Thomas, Ecommerce Manager at Paul Smith, shared their MACH journey and how Klevu’s AI solutions empowered them to enhance their day-to-day operations. Steve emphasized the simplicity and effectiveness of Klevu’s AI tools, which allowed their team to focus on creating a better customer experience rather than complex technical implementations.

With Paul Smith, it was clear that they couldn’t go fully MACH right away, so they started with product discovery, the shopper-facing experience, including personalized on-site search, category merchandising and product recommendations which worked in tandem, with the AI algorithms sharing data and insights to provide a more comprehensive and satisfying user experience. The added benefit to this was a 74% increase in search revenue and 30% increase in ecommerce conversion within a few weeks.

Klevu’s vision is to bring AI product discovery to every ecommerce business. At the same time, Klevu’s mission is to do everything possible to ethically empower people to use AI to improve experiences in ecommerce.  We do that by creating groundbreaking AI innovations that answer common use cases for ecommerce, making our products as easy to use as possible, and available to a wide audience; also educating ourselves and the world about the opportunities and limits of AI to positively impact the global ecommerce community. 

Learn more about the future of AI and product discovery by watching the insightful sessions from the Discovered Conference, all ungated and on demand.