AI in ecommerce: How to make it work for your business

Yes, another article on AI. But in ecommerce, it’s very hard to have a conversation about the future of the industry without it coming up. 

From forecasting stock levels to writing campaign emails, AI can sometimes feel like the solution to all your problems. But adopting it for the sake of it won’t necessarily deliver better results. In fact, using it without a clear purpose can waste your team’s time and eat into your budget. 

The brands getting the most out of AI aren’t using it everywhere. They’re being selective, and identifying where it can make a genuine difference. Used well, it can sharpen decision-making, take repetitive tasks off your team’s hands and improve how both the front and back end of the business operate. 

In The State of Ecommerce Report, we collaborated with 4 industry experts to explore where AI is genuinely making an impact, from agentic shopping and content creation to customer data and operational efficiency.

One of the biggest changes AI has made is how people discover and buy products. Discovery, purchasing and customer service are becoming increasingly connected, creating more conversational shopping experiences across websites, social media, messaging platforms and tools such as ChatGPT. 

This means rethinking the role of customer support. Rather than treating it purely as a cost centre, brands have the opportunity to turn customer conversations into a revenue channel. AI can handle routine queries, answer product questions and even take actions such as updating an order or recommending a product. 

Of course, getting a quick answer isn’t enough if it’s the wrong one. AI needs to understand a brand’s products, policies and tone of voice to provide useful answers and maintain customer trust. Human teams still have an important role to play, particularly when an interaction needs judgement or a more personal response.

As Hannah Morris, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Gorgias puts it: “The storefront is not disappearing. It’s becoming a conversation.”

The opportunity isn’t simply to automate more interactions. It’s to make every conversation count, whether that’s resolving a customer query or helping someone make a purchase.

Content is another area where AI can make a real difference, particularly for ecommerce businesses managing large product catalogues and multiple marketing channels.

It can help draft product descriptions, identify internal linking opportunities, write alt text, spot duplicate content and organise keyword research. All useful ways to speed up production and take some of the repetitive work off your team’s plate.

But faster content production doesn’t automatically mean better content. Scaling output shouldn’t come at the expense of quality, credibility or brand voice. 

Laura Brady, Head of Strategy & Client Services at NOVOS, recommends a human-led, three-stage approach:

1. Start with a detailed brief written by a person
2. Use AI to produce the bulk of the draft
3. Bring human expertise to review and improve the output

The brief is particularly important. AI needs clear direction on brand tone, audience, relevant expertise, sources, topics to avoid and the structure it should follow. Without this context, content risks becoming a rehash of what’s already available rather than offering anything genuinely useful. 

As Laura explains in our State of Ecommerce Report: “The activity should be AI-enhanced, not AI-led.”

Human reviews remain essential too. Content needs to be checked for accuracy, supported by credible sources and strengthened with original insight from experts who understand the subject. The aim isn’t simply to publish more, it’s to produce better content, more efficiently.

While AI is changing how customers shop, it’s also changing what retailers can see about those journeys.

AI shopping agents are beginning to take on more of the product research, comparison and purchasing journey. For DTC brands, that raises an important question: what happens when more of the customer journey takes place outside of their own storefront?

If a consumer arrives through an AI recommendation and goes straight to checkout, retailers may see the transaction without understanding the research, preferences or decisions that led to it. 

Edward Upton, Founder and CEO of Littledata, describes this as a potential data blackout. Brands risk losing the visibility they rely on to understand customer intent, improve merchandising and make informed marketing decisions. 

As Edward puts it: “You know the sale happened, but you’ve lost the story behind it.”

To avoid losing that connection, retailers need to keep building direct relationships with their customers. Loyalty programmes, memberships, exclusive content and communities give shoppers reasons to engage with a brand beyond a single transaction. 

Having the right data infrastructure behind those relationships matters just as much. Connected customer touchpoints through a server-side data layer can give retailers a more complete picture of the customer journey and provide cleaner data for their own AI tools. 

Because whether it’s forecasting demand, improving merchandising or analysing marketing performance, AI is only as useful as the information it’s working with. Understanding your customers and the journeys behind their purchase will become increasingly important as shopping behaviour evolves.

AI’s impact isn’t limited to what customers see. Some of its biggest opportunities are behind the scenes, helping ecommerce teams tackle the everyday tasks that eat into their time. 

Manual stock checks, weekly reports and product listing updates might seem like small tasks, but they quickly add up across a busy ecommerce operation. 

Automating repetitive, rules-based processes such as inventory syncing, low-stock alerts and routine reporting can reduce errors and give teams more time for higher-value work. AI-powered demand forecasting can also help retailers anticipate stock issues and manage  inventory across multiple sales channels (Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop). 

But there’s an important distinction between automating work and simply replacing it. As The Despatch Company explains: “The point of automating the repetitive work isn’t headcount reduction, it’s redirection.”

The real value comes from giving more teams time to focus on work that needs their experience and judgement, whether that’s improving customer experience, building supplier relationships or making better strategic decisions.

Across customer experience, content, data and operations, AI is creating opportunities for ecommerce businesses to work smarter. But the biggest gains won’t necessarily come from adopting the latest tools or automating everything in sight. 

They’ll come from knowing where AI can genuinely add value, giving it the right data and direction, and recognising where human expertise still matters. 

Want to explore more trends shaping ecommerce? Discover all 20 topics in The State of Ecommerce Report, backed by research from 2000+ consumers and 200+ ecommerce decision-makers, alongside expert perspectives and real-world case studies. 

Download the report.