Shopify is becoming a more successful platform for e-commerce every single day. While having a good range of products is still important to having a successful online store, it is also important to provide customers with the right products when they want them. With the increasing number of products available through the Shopify platform, tools to place products in front of the customer when they are looking for them are necessary to make sure customers are able to find them within the store.

AI merchandising will help Shopify merchants by automating the merchandising of products in their store so that they can get more customers to their store and buy products through the store. This will help Shopify merchants provide customers with a greater array of products and services in a timely manner. It will also allow Shopify merchants to create more personalized shopping experiences for their customers to ensure they are able to easily make an informed purchase.

What Is AI Merchandising?

AI merchandising refers to using artificial intelligence as well as machine learning technology to automatically categorize, rank/order, and recommend suggested items to your customers, personalize those items, and display personalized information related to specific shoppers based upon their prior interactions with your store.

AI merchandising technologies do not use fixed ‘static’ guidelines, such as bestsellers or newly added products; while AI merchandising technologies Analyze the Following Information to Determine Product Discovery Options:

• Shoppers’ Actions on the Website (Click-Through Rate, Search History, Views, Purchases)
• Inventory Availability
• New and/or Real-Time Intent Detection
• Shopper Context Including: Device Type, Current Time, Seasonal and Current Trends

Ultimately, the end result is an adaptive storefront where each shopper’s experience is unique with no manual intervention required.

Why Traditional Shopify Merchandising Falls Short

Shopify initially provides great foundational tools to support merchant growth; however, as stores grow larger and scale, store owners run into several issues, including:

• Customers having difficulty locating pertinent products
• High bounce rates for collection and search results pages
• Standardized product sorting methods
• Manual merchandising does not scale with the growth of the catalogue.

Static sorting rules are incapable of identifying buyer intent, whereas artificial intelligence does.

How AI Merchandising Works on Shopify

With the use of AI-based merchandising, you can enhance key touchpoints where customers engage with your shop, including:

Smart Product Ranking

AI uses multiple data points to assign ranks to products, including product relevance, product popularity, product availability, and buyer intent; this process allows customers to view the products that they will most likely purchase sooner, rather than waiting to see them at the end of the purchasing cycle.

Personalized Recommendations

For each unique shopper, AI will present tailored suggestions based on previous browsing and purchasing activity, increasing average order values and improving customer engagement.

More Accurate Search Results

AI has the ability to understand the meaning of natural speech, synonyms, and buyer intent; therefore, as customers search for products using incomplete or inaccurate search queries, AI helps route them to their desired products through more accurate results.

Dynamic Collections

Collections are automatically updated according to performance data, trending products, and previous customer preferences, eliminating the need for any manual intervention to reschedule items.

Why AI Merchandising Matters More Than Ever

Today’s consumers want shopping experiences across all sites like what is available from Amazon. If they can’t find what they want in seconds, they are gone.

Through AI merchandising, Shopify merchants can:

• Enhance conversion rates
• Lower search abandonment
• Enhance product discovery
• Increase Average Order Value
• Reduce manual effort for merchandising

But more than anything else, it provides shoppers with the smoothest shopping experience possible.

AI Merchandising with Expectec

Expectrec translates AI-powered merchandising into a plugin on Shopify that is practical, accelerates product discovery, and is easy to work with from a merchant’s standpoint.

Instead of requiring merchants to configure highly detailed rules to establish the rules of AI merchandising in their store, Expectrec leverages AI to learn from the actual shopping habits of each individual shopper, so it can keep optimizing the method of discovery throughout the entire store.

With Expectrec, merchants have access to:

• Automatic personalized product rankings
• Improved relevance of on-site search
• Faster highlighting of high-intent products
• Real-time adjustment of merchandising strategies
• Effortless scaling of catalogs as they continue to grow

It is designed to work in the background of a merchant’s store so that merchants may concentrate on growing their business while Expectrec’s AI technology optimizes the merchandising for them.

Built for Growing Shopify Stores

From niche DTC brands to huge online retailers with thousands of items in their catalogs, Expectrec puts a storefront in front of every shopper that they see specifically for their shopping intent.

No longer will you need to guess what you should sell.

No longer will you need to manually sort products into categories.

You now have a more intelligent approach to merchandising based on the intelligence of AI.

Final Thoughts

AI-powered merchandising is not merely an additional feature for Shopify merchants; it is now a needed resource for success. With ever-increasing customer expectations and increasing competitive pressures, using Expectrec or similar tools will allow merchants to stay ahead of the game by providing their customers with personalized and conversion-oriented product discovery experiences.

If you want to convert traffic into revenue for your Shopify store, you should begin by implementing AI merchandising.