Maximising the potential of AI for your multivendor marketplace

Within the multivendor marketplace world, Artificial Intelligence has been the technology garnering the limelight in the past year. It is not only making humans more competent but also redefining how we do business. According to Gartner, 37% of firms have used AI in one form or the other and the ratio of businesses using AI has increased by 270% in the last four years.

We have all encountered AI in our day-to-day lives but never realised that AI was already existing in applications that we use on a daily basis. Going beyond the use of generative AI, which would consist of Chat-GPT, Alexa, Siri, etc., AI has been embedded into our lives through AI-enabled analytics, AI-assisted search, and AI-assisted biometric recognition.

The potential of AI is far beyond just generative AI but must be traversed carefully due to the large number of ethical concerns that arise with the use of AI. One of the biggest concerns with the use of AI is the large repository of data that is used to build the machine learning and deep learning models on which the AI operates. Other ethical concerns include AI reaching for artificial general intelligence, which would then not require any intervention by humans to operate. It would be able to upgrade itself on its own and develop other AI entities to carry out its own agenda.

The intention of this article, though, is to discuss the advantages of having AI embedded in your online marketplace to facilitate customer experience and efficiency. Some of the aspects of the a multivendor marketplace where AI can enhance your marketplace are:

How AI-assisted chatbots affect your multivendor marketplace

Customer experience is essential for any multivendor marketplace, and making sure that any query or issue of the customer is addressed in the least time possible. Organisations have replaced human agents with AI bots that can address the queries of customers either via chat or voice. While an AI-powered chatbot is a rudimentary form of how AI can possibly enable the customer experience on your multivendor marketplace, ML and deep learning models, along with consumer data, can personalise the shopping experience.

Key features to look out for in AI Chatbots for your multivendor marketplace:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): It is crucial for multivendor marketplace personalisation as it helps decipher customer language for a customised experience. This in turn helps multivendor marketplaces to better understand customer inquiries, comments and reviews.
• Multi-Language Support: It enables seamless interaction with customers without any geographical barriers
• Personalised Product Recommendations: It enhances the multivendor marketplace experience by customising suggestions based on past purchases and browsing history
• Order Tracking and Updates: Provides real-time updates and order tracking, ensuring transparency and confidence in the brand

Gupshup is one of our technology partners which specializes in building AI-based chatbots that can elevate your marketplace experience through conversational AI.

AI-powered multivendor marketplace analytics

Multivendor Marketplace processes massive quantities of data every day and has to track a large number of parameters to gauge whether their online marketplace is working at the efficiency that they would like. Processing these large datasets and visualising them on a dashboard requires AI in the majority of the steps.

AI can possibly be utilised at the point of ingestion, storage, processing, and visualisation of the data. The majority of multivendor marketplaces utilise AI at the processing and visualisation stage but often ignore the long-term benefits of having AI during the ingestion and storage of data. AI can be a game changer when it comes to managing online marketplace datasets, and the usage of AI depends on marketplace preferences.

Online Marketplace analytics can help online marketplaces reduce their time to market by consistently monitoring their performance and enabling the owners to make accurate, predictive, or prescriptive decisions to tackle future challenges.

AI-powered content

One of the biggest USPs of a multivendor marketplace is the content that it uses to attract customers to its website. Content plays a massive role for a multivendor marketplace to make sure they are attracting new customers onto their marketplace website and keeping the old customers loyal.

Generating and personalising content can both be managed by AI. Humans can help create models and feed in the data, which can enable the multivendor marketplace to do the same. A few of the places where AI can play a vital role are product descriptions, social media content, optimising content across platforms for customer preferences, and increased discoverability. 

Using AI technology for supply chain within your multivendor marketplace

AI can be one of the greatest assets in the supply chain for any multivendor marketplace. A large chunk of the marketplace’s operations involves order processing and shipping. The utilisation of AI across these two modules can significantly reduce costs and increase the efficiency of any multivendor marketplace.

AI can be used at both the front end and the back end of the Shopify multivendor marketplace. Managing orders can be a cumbersome task for marketplace owners, and utilising AI to categorise and process orders can be of great use. At the same time, multivendor marketplace owners can use AI-based recommendations to increase the average order value.

Shipping is tedious since it involves calculating the best prices and the most efficient route while keeping in mind the customer experience. AI can perform these complex calculations at the back and provide the dual benefit of increased efficiency while reducing costs, coupled with an enhanced customer experience.

The supply chain has many more AI-based use cases that apply to large a multivendor marketplace, such as contract management, forecasting, pricing, etc. Multivendor Marketplaces, which are relatively small, must focus on their operational priorities before they can start generating new streams of income for their online marketplace.

AI-powered marketing can help distinguish your multivendor marketplace

AI has been one of the driving forces in marketing and sales. You can pick any process in the marketing and sales value chain, and you will find a use case that is already utilising AI. Marketers have been using AI to effectively deliver advertisements based on interests and customer data that has been collected by your multivendor marketplace and advertising platforms. AI is used in processing customer data for relevant insights. The sales team often uses AI to manage leads and often provides them with information that can help convert.

Marketing is perhaps one of the most viable functions for the application of AI and can reap benefits for online marketplace owners by increasing brand recall and sales.

To schedule a call with our multivendor marketplace growth experts, click here.

Conclusion

The benefits of AI are tremendous, but there is a need for multivendor marketplace owners to understand the technology and prioritise its use according to the growth stage of their marketplace. A newly created multivendor marketplace should focus on bringing customers to the website and processing their data to generate insights that can help the marketplace grow. A large multivendor marketplace has to focus on the supply chain side of AI since creating new revenue streams can have a massive impact on their business. We also have to consider the fact that AI can only enable a multivendor marketplace through a human who knows how to maximise its potential. There is a massive requirement for talent that not only understands the technology but can also utilise it for the betterment of their organisation.

 AI can possibly help a multivendor marketplace reach new heights, but we have to be careful of the ethical challenges that the use of AI might bring. If these ethical issues can be carefully traversed, your multivendor marketplace has the stage set for the next stage of growth.

Shipturtle, the best marketplace app for building a multivendor marketplace offers multiple such options to integrate with AI partners and ensure you stay ahead of the game. To connect with our online marketplace experts or try Shipturtle for free, sign up here.