Why merchants should leverage technological solutions

The impact of technology on businesses is enormous, having transformed them from traditional brick-and-mortar stores to successful digital enterprises. With advancements ranging from mobile phones to next-gen technologies like Chat GPT, businesses are now able to work smarter and not harder.

In today’s retail world, the focus is on technological innovation across the business landscape and the practical use of AI, which has a direct impact on profits and sales. While navigating the complexities of AI, ML, and Data Science can be challenging, these technologies provide merchants with innovative tools to shape and expand their businesses in unprecedented ways.

As ecommerce continues to dominate the retail industry, consumers have come to demand a seamless and tailored shopping experience. To meet these expectations, merchants can leverage technology to build innovative products, optimise their operations, enhance customer experiences, and boost revenue. Technological solutions are transforming how consumers engage with brands, making it critical for new-age businesses to adopt these innovations to remain competitive and relevant.

Product creation and finding product-market-fit

Merchants need to understand the buyer journey and leverage technology to quickly prototype and test new product ideas without having massive investments in manufacturing. Through this exercise, retailers can get quick feedback from the market and reach product-market fit frugally.

Leveraging technological solutions for product creation can help merchants in identifying customer needs, developing relevant products, and ultimately maximising their success in the dynamic Indian market.

Awareness stage - How will the consumer spot you?

India's startup ecosystem is experiencing rapid growth, with a surge in creative ideas being transformed into entrepreneurial ventures. As more new businesses emerge, India is fast becoming a magnet for startup hubs. In such a saturated marketplace, what are some effective strategies for building brand awareness?

Here’s where marketing automation comes in to save the day. With the use of machine learning algorithms and data analytics, merchants can identify their target audience based on their interests, demographics, and online behaviour, and deliver personalised ads. Retailers can think of it in three simple steps:

● Data aggregation - building a place where data from multiple sources can be aggregated in a clean manner

● Intelligent segmentation - deriving insights from this massive data and creating effective segments to target or retarget

● Effective channel communication - figuring out the best offer and place to target this set of users

All this is possible with marketing automation tools. This helps in forecasting customer behaviour, interacting with potential customers in real time, and delivering a better consumer experience.

Consideration stage

At the consideration stage, customers are comparing different products or services. The ability to predict what the customer wants using AI can help merchants boost conversion. Recommendation engines that can understand the pulse of the consumer by looking at signals from multiple digital footprints of the customer help create a personalised experience that customers will love. They collect data using their orders, catalogues, shipments, and returns, to help sellers target their consumers.

Additionally, sellers can leverage AI-led platforms that provide sales trends and benchmarks across the industry to help them target the right segments and predict projections for the future and where the demand is going to come from. These tools will help merchants analyse customer data, identify buying patterns, and suggest products that the consumer is looking for.

Purchase stage

The purchase stage is one of the most important stages in a buyer’s and seller’s journey. While the consumer has to make the deciding vote and hit the ‘Proceed to Checkout’ button, it is a revenue-generating stage for the merchant.

Frictionless and intelligent experiences are needed to make this last purchase step very effective - from having super-fast load times across all network areas to differential pricing and offers for consumers, all are technology capabilities that should be leveraged to convert buyers. The experience continues further downstream using technology, by real-time updates on the status of orders, and creating personalised post-purchase experiences. It becomes imperative for retailers to leverage data analytics to constantly learn and unlearn dynamic consumer preferences. Additionally, AI-powered chatbots can be at the beck and call of the consumer to answer any kind of queries and hence, provide a great customer experience

Post-purchase stage

Being the ‘seal the deal' stage for merchants, implementation of tech-backed solutions in this stage will help them make the customers feel valued and appreciated. By providing round-the-clock support, AI-led chatbots can deliver a faster response time and hence help retailers ace the after-sales support game. The consumer's need for speed is higher than ever, and hence delivery performance plays an important role in enhancing the buyer journey.

Sellers should leverage AI-led platforms that make recommendations to them on how to deliver the best logistics experience by selecting the best delivery partners. By leveraging data analytics, merchants can create actionable insights into retaining consumers and providing an engaging experience. Retailers can create loyalty programmes to reward customers for their repeat business. By offering discounts, free shipping, or exclusive offers to loyal customers, merchants can improve customer retention and increase customer lifetime value.

Acing India’s AI-powered techade

We are living in a tech prowess-infused era with the arrival of India’s ‘techade’. Technology is equipping merchants with a new innovation-led paradigm of opportunities and possibilities. It is here to shape the future of the customer experience landscape.

To remain competitive in the market, merchants should keep developing and adopting new technologies that can provide scalability, flexibility, and agility at reduced prices. From using AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to offering personalised product recommendations, technology can help retailers connect with their customers in new and innovative ways. This, in turn, can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher sales, and greater profitability. By embracing these innovations, retailers can stay ahead of the curve and deliver the kind of shopping experience that keeps customers coming back for more. This AI-led innovation can truly help the consumer by assisting them to understand what and where to buy and thereby transforming their journey from “Adding to Cart” to “Proceeding to Checkout.”

(Praful Poddar is the Chief Product Officer at Shiprocket)