From browsing to buying: AI transforms e-commerce journey

[ad_1]

Bengaluru

At 9:30 pm on a weeknight, interior designer Rhea G sat scrolling through ChatGPT, unsure what to gift her niece for her upcoming birthday. She typed, “Find me something fun, and age-appropriate for an 8-year-old who loves drawing.” Within seconds, the AI tool offered not just a product but context — links, descriptions, and even a comparison of kits available online.

“Instead of browsing through all the websites, AI works like a personal assistant enabling discovery as well as saving time,” said Rhea.

Immersive shopping

New-age technologies are reshaping e-commerce as it transform shopping from a transactional activity to an immersive, personalised experience.

Walmart-owned Myntra’s shopping assistant Maya helps users sharpen search, filters choice, and navigate through millions of styles with relevance and ease.

“Users who interacted with Maya are 31 per cent more likely to ask Maya questions again. Maya helps in cutting through decision fatigue and turning endless browsing into effortless curation. Abandonment rate for engaged sessions has improved by 3X for us,” said Lakshminarayan Swaminathan, Head of Product Management and Design at Myntra.

“Complementing this is MyFashionGPT, which lets users express their fashion needs in their own words — be it ‘a Diwali look or ‘what to wear to a beach wedding’. It decodes these everyday cues to deliver tailored product recommendations across categories,” he added.

E-commerce major Meesho has built a deeply AI-integrated e-commerce engine that powers everything from personalised product discovery to customer service and seller optimisation. With over 187 million annual transacting users, Meesho’s platform doesn’t just react to user queries — it anticipates them.

“By leveraging AI models to analyse factors like category preferences, demographics, and time spent on the platform, we deliver a highly personalised shopping experience,” Meesho said in its FY24 annual report.

Even traditional barriers like language are being redefined by AI. Meesho uses Large Language Models (LLMs) to understand vernacular expressions, decode mixed-language queries, and even correct typos in real-time.

Nuanced vernacular expressions

“Our personalised search capabilities leverage LLMs to decode nuanced vernacular expressions, correct errors, and rewrite queries,” the company noted.

Amazon’s generative AI shopping assistant Rufus, is trained in its product catalog and customer Q&As. Rufus helps users compare products, understand key features, and make more informed purchase decisions — all through a conversational interface embedded within the Amazon app.

Digital concierge

Along the same lines, Mayank Maggon, Founder, CEO & CTO, TechChefz Digital noted how AI-powered chat acts as not only a marketing tool but also digital concierge from awareness and consideration to conversion and retention. ”At the top of the funnel, it educates new visitors, explains your value proposition, and sparks interest. In the middle, it recommends products, compares features, and answers deeper questions.

At the bottom, it handles objections, applies discount codes, and nudges toward purchase. Post-purchase, it enables reorders, offers tailored upsells, and provides fast support,” he said.

Conversational AI

Maggon also noted that the shift from traditional chatbots to conversational AI redefined how brands approach customer engagement. AI chat tools have now surpassed predefined rules, keywords and predefined flows. They understand context, intent, tone, and natural language, making the interaction feel human and responsive. “We’re moving from transaction-focused chat to experience-led engagement—and the result is measurable: higher satisfaction, improved conversion rates, and more loyal customers,” he added.