This article was updated in November 2020.
More and more businesses today are searching for ways to integrate current and emerging technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), into their digital marketing strategy.
AI is used across many industries to automate processes and is something you likely encounter on a daily basis. Giants such as Google and Amazon apply it extensively to refine search results and offer product recommendations. What’s more, even smaller websites can integrate AI to improve their user experience (UX).
Using AI on your own website can:
- Lower costs, as you’ll be spending less time on various aspects of website management.
- Improve customer experience, since AI can be used to analyze data and deliver a more streamlined experience to your visitors.
- Save resources, as AI can perform many tasks that non-developers cannot.
Perhaps best of all is the fact that AI, by its very nature, will become “smarter” the more often it’s used. This means that the UX on your website can continually improve as its AI becomes better equipped to handle your visitors’ needs.
Now, let’s take a closer look at some specific ways you can successfully leverage AI to improve your website. You may wish to try out just one of these methods, or experiment with all three.
Improve Users’ Experience with Visual and Voice Search
The way visitors search your website’s content is important, since it determines whether they find what they’re looking for. This is why the use of various search types—such as visual and voice—are recommended to improve your UX.
Both of these search options are used extensively on larger websites such as Google but work well on smaller sites too. Visual search offers users a unique way to browse your website, and this is especially useful for ecommerce sites. Voice search, on the other hand, is a perfect way to improve your site’s mobile friendliness.
Even better, both of these search types can incorporate AI in order to improve their functionality. To ensure you get the most from your visual and voice search, we recommend that you:
- Choose an AI with visual categorization features. AI software, such as that offered by Clarifai, is able to categorize and organize visual elements of your website. This makes visual search simpler and more effective.
- Understand how voice searches are unique. Unlike standard searches, you’ll need to choose an AI with a more conversational approach.
Enhance the Customer Experience With a Chatbot
Chatbots can enhance the customer experience on your site, as a chatbot can easily assist visitors or customers by answering simple questions. It can also direct them to the correct web page.
Best of all, a chatbot can function 24/7. This will improve your odds of conversions, as visitors won’t have to wait long for a response to their queries. It also saves you and your team from having to answer the same fundamental questions every day.
There are two types of chatbots: those that run as standard programs and those that are managed by AI. We recommend an AI chatbot for your website for various reasons, but mainly because it can learn better ways to interact with and respond to your customers over time.
To get started, you can do one of two things:
- Hire a web developer. They can build a personalized chatbot for your website, and can even program it to learn.
- Use an AI chatbot tool. These programmed chatbots can be added to just about any platform, and many solutions enable you to personalize the bot yourself.
While you may need to step in for your AI chatbot on occasion—after all, it can’t offer a fully personalized experience to your visitors—your chatbot will improve over time as it becomes accustomed to your audience. This is the beauty of an AI-based chatbot.
Improve Sales Performance With Better Analysis
If you run an ecommerce website, you know just how important your sales performance is to the success of your business. One way to improve this performance and increase your profits is through careful analysis. Carrying out regular analysis of your website and other marketing efforts will help you identify weak points in your strategy, which then enables you to improve them.
There are many software programs that can analyze your current performance and make appropriate recommendations. However, AI is able to take this process one step further. With the right AI, you can:
- Create a marketing persona. Data collected by AI can help you better understand your target audience, and build a persona around their wants and needs.
- Analyze your conversations with customers. Whether over the phone or via email, AI tools such as Dialpad can analyze your conversations and make suggestions based off their findings.
Finally, AI can also be used to assist your sales team. Tools like Nudge exist to streamline the entire sales process, as they offer insight on your target customers. They can even make recommendations to individual sales team members on the next steps to take. AI’s current implementation makes it possible for you to leverage its many uses on your own website.
Do you have any questions about Artificial Intelligence, or how you can use it to improve your website? Let us know in the comments section below!