The Future of E-Commerce: Conversational Shopping
"Amazon, I don't know exactly what I want, but it's something to help me sleep"
E-commerce is one of those industries that never stops innovating. As a professional in the field, I can attest that it feels like every day a new system or technology debuts that we need to learn in order to stay relevant. While technology continues to evolve, there is one future innovation I see coming that will change everything forever: conversational shopping. Imagine being able to ask Amazon what you're looking for in natural language without really knowing what you need, and getting relevant results. For instance, if you’ve been having trouble sleeping, you could ask Amazon, “I don’t really know what I need, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping — could you help?” and receive a range of results, from pillows to melatonin and more. Let’s explore the future of this technology, its benefits for everyone, and what’s driving this innovation.
The Evolution of E-Commerce
There are many conflicting reports about what constitutes the first true e-commerce transaction. Some students from Stanford and MIT claim to have sold marijuana online as early as 1972, while Pizza Hut asserts that the first real transaction was a pizza sold online by them in 1994. Regardless of the true origins, the point is that the evolution from where we started to where we are today is astonishing. If you told someone in 1994, or even 1972, that in the near future, you could order something online with one click and have it at your doorstep in as little as two hours, they would probably have thought you were crazy. What if I told you that in just a few short years, even that will seem ancient?
What is Conversational Shopping?
With the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems, we are swiftly approaching a point where we can speak to a computer as naturally as we speak to a friend and receive responses that sound like they're coming from an actual person. While this technology has enormous potential in nearly every aspect of our lives, e-commerce is one area where we’ll quickly notice a change. How many times have you arrived at a store and spent time searching for something you knew you needed, but you weren’t quite sure what it was or where to find it? What if a system could tell you what you're looking for just by listening to your query?
The Technology Behind Conversational Shopping
Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP allows computers to understand and process human language. In the context of e-commerce, NLP helps interpret user queries, extract relevant information, and respond accurately.
Large Language Models (LLMs): LLMs are systems that are trained on an astronomically large amount of data to understand the complexities and nuances of language. They can utilize this knowledge to interact with other systems and provide mostly correct answers after you ask a question.
Machine Learning (ML): ML algorithms analyze vast amounts of data to learn patterns and improve the accuracy of responses over time. This enables the system to better understand user preferences and provide more relevant product recommendations.
Voice Recognition: With the increasing use of voice-activated devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home, voice recognition technology is becoming an integral part of conversational shopping. Users can simply speak their queries and receive responses, making the process even more seamless.
Benefits of Conversational Shopping
The future of conversational shopping is bright! There are numerous benefits that arise as this technology becomes more mainstream, including an enhanced user experience, personalization of shopping, efficiency, increased engagement, and perhaps most importantly, accessibility. Let’s discuss each of these separately:
Enhanced User Experience
No longer would you be hamstrung by a website’s inadequacy in finding what you want or need. Conversational shopping can make the experience much more intuitive and user-friendly. Simply express what you’re looking for in your own words, and let the system do the work for you! This approach makes it much easier to discover items that you might never have found otherwise but are perfect for your needs.
Personalization
While some people may have privacy concerns, the more you utilize these websites and systems with conversational shopping, the more they’ll learn about your preferences. Over time, these models will understand what you like, what you crave, and what you sometimes want at two in the morning, enabling them to offer hyper-personalized suggestions without you even having to search for them.
Efficiency
How much time do you spend browsing aimlessly on sites like Amazon or Walmart, or even walking up and down every aisle at your local department store? With conversational shopping, you can drastically reduce this wasted time and spend it being more productive or enjoying more time with your family.
Increased Engagement
While the other points specifically highlight the benefits to you, the consumer, there is also a significant advantage for manufacturers and sellers. When an intelligent system can demonstrate that the item it is recommending is exactly what you want, and even engage in a conversation about it, it could potentially lead to much higher conversion rates and average order values.
Accessibility
Anyone who knows me understands that I am extremely passionate about creating solutions that everyone can use, regardless of their circumstances. I firmly believe that advancements should benefit everyone, not just a select few. Conversational commerce represents a major step forward in accessibility. By making online shopping as simple as having a conversation, we can open up possibilities for many different groups who may have faced barriers before. This technology can be a game-changer for those with visual impairments, limited mobility, or other challenges, making it easier for them to shop online independently. The potential to make online shopping more inclusive and accessible to all is enormous.
Challenges and Considerations
While the future of conversational shopping is promising, there are some challenges that need to be addressed. The first of these challenges involves accuracy—ensuring that the system can understand the myriad of different speaking styles, accents, dialects, and respond accurately. If the system frequently misinterprets you or provides erroneous results, it may actually lead to a decrease in your shopping experience.
Next is privacy. In today's world, many people are hyper focused on ensuring their data stays out of the wrong hands. If you're having conversations with a system, you want to be sure that the conversation remains private, especially if you're searching for an item that may be sensitive in any way. Ensuring robust data protection and privacy measures will be crucial to gaining and maintaining user trust.
Additionally, you want the system to integrate seamlessly with existing systems. One of the biggest pain points in technology in 2024 is the lack of integration between different systems that perform various functions for you. For example, in a smart home, you might have an Amazon Alexa voice assistant, but one of your switches is only compatible with Apple's HomeKit, which doesn't work with Alexa. This incompatibility means you can't use your voice assistant to control that switch, resulting in a user experience that is not friendly or convenient. Seamless integration is essential for making the technology truly useful and user-friendly.
The Future
The future of e-commerce is a funny concept because, effectively, the future arrives every single day. Any day now, Amazon will be releasing Rufus, which will be the first major conversational shopping experience. As the first of its kind, it may not be perfect, but it represents a significant step into the future, bringing with it all the benefits and challenges we've highlighted in this article. In any case, the future of online shopping is exciting, and hopefully, we'll continue down the path of making our everyday lives easier and more enjoyable.