Want to grow? Here’s what to know…

Don’t know about your feed, but I can’t move for AI-related stuff on mine right now. Which got me thinking for edition two… how can AI help the kinds of businesses we work with? The answer I landed on…

AI can help your business grow by being more like a physical store.?

A word on physical retail first. It’s all about customer experience. And when it’s done well, it’s awesome.

I started my career in places like Homebase. Every morning, our incredible store manager and retail master Steve, would take the whole team out to and we’d ‘walk the store’ to see everything from the eyes of the customer from when they arrived in their car, right through the shop to when they left. It’s something I feel so many people in eCom should do more of. Walk your online store. Get out of the data and actually experience what your shoppers experience. Take on the roles of different customers and when you feel pain in the journey, fix it.

When physical retail is done right it feels like the High Street is bending around the things you care about and the people serving you add value instead of getting in the way.

With new AI tools being launched every day right now it’s got me exploring what the opportunities are for eCom merchants to personalise the shopping experience just like physical shops do to improve customer experience and increase conversions.

Here’s three immediate ways I think eCom brands can leverage AI in this way…

1. You can put the umbrellas out when it’s raining

If you’ve ever been walking around London and got caught in the April showers you’ll see how quick the great merchants respond. You can’t take 5 steps without being able to put your hand on an umbrella, so you buy one. Happy merchant, dry you.

Using AI, you can take in contextual data and have your ‘shop window’ dynamically change based on a huge range of live inputs and have it constantly learn and adapt to deliver maximum conversions.

2. “I put that guitar aside for you Rich.”

Remember those moments…you’re in a shop and thinking about making a purchase, the sales assistant has gone to the back and found the exact model you’re interested in, but you’re not quite ready to buy. So you walk out.

When you finally come back in after an hour of convincing yourself you do actually need that new guitar, the sales assistant welcomes you back in and says “Welcome back Rich, I put that guitar aside for you in case you were coming back. It looked great on you so didn’t want anyone grabbing it”’.? A warm feeling comes over you, you smile and you make the purchase with a lasting memory of how great the shopping experience was.

With AI you can deliver this same feeling to your customers, by having the storefront change to the products they were looking at when they come back in.

3. You can act like Amazon?

When you visit Amazon it’s an experience built around you. Contextual data based on the device you’re using, time of day etc and historic data of what you’ve browsed and bought.

Up until now the barriers to entry (compute power, data scientists and custom development work) have made it near impossible for smaller DTC brands to give this sort of experience to their customers.

With AI, every company can now offer this adaptive experience. Making the shopping experience more enjoyable for your customers and growing your eCom brand the right way.

And if all of this has got you thinking I’d like to know more about that…

>>> Join us for our first Lunch & Learn next week >>>

Click here and join us for a Lunch and Learn with Alan Gormley from Shopbox on the 25th at 12.15pm.

Alan Gormley has spent over 20 years working with data we’ll discuss and demo how AI tools like Shopbox can deliver a curated buying experience for every shopper - and drive sales.

Can’t make it live? Register above and we’ll send you the link and summary of everything we cover.

>>> Have fun with your product descriptions with AI using our Product Description Assistant >>>

We’ve made a cool thing. And we want you to have a play with it. At The Growth Foundation we’ve been enjoying exploring how AI can support DTC brands and playing with OpenAI’s APIs.?

So we made this this free tool. It uses AI to generate descriptions for your product pages and social channels. Product descriptions are a great way to build your brand (soooooo many brand’s product descriptions are boring) and this is a quick and easy way to make a start and get something down on the page, that you can then go on to refine.

Get creative.

Click here to try out Product Description Assistant and get notified when we add new features.

>>> Links I’ve been loving keeping on the AI theme…

In this episode of the All-In podcast the gang go deep on AI. From how AutoGPT creates an agent that interacts with other AI agents <head blow emoji> through to if the space needs regulation. Have a listen to the podcast on Apple podcasts here or search All-In episode 124 in your podcatcher of choice

I needed a ‘tired old Rich’ and a ‘Hollywood Rich’ for a presentation recently (more on that in a future edition), so I decided to give MindJourney a try. Here’s a 2 minute video showing you how to use generative AI, there’s some great help and links in the description to get you started.

This link wasn’t from me but from a member of the team with the note ‘no more inbound Q’s on Excel formulas from me, I’ve got an assistant? <smiley emoji>’. If you're an Excel user then this resource might help. Convert text prompts into formulas.

That’s it from edition two.?

If you know anyone in your network that would enjoy this, please do forward it on.

Until next time…?

R