Tools/February 6, 2023

10 Ecommerce AI Tools to Grow Your Business

Alfred

Alfred

Co-founder

An painting of a robot behind a laptop

AI isn't just for writing. Here are tools that use artificial intelligence or machine learning to help you with product images, customer service, retention, and more.

AI is all in rage right now—for good reasons.

If you are not using AI tools for your ecommerce business, you are missing out on the opportunities to reach more shoppers, understand them, get them to buy, and keep them buying.

ChatGPT isn't the only AI tool, though it is a great one to use. Yes, AI tools can help you with many more things than just writing.

Here is a list of AI tools that your competitors are probably using:

  1. Product images: Pebblely
  2. Customer service: Tidio
  3. Subscription retention: Stay Ai
  4. Product recommendations: Octane AI
  5. Internationalization: Transcy
  6. Inventory forecasting: Bucephalus
  7. Upsell: Vanga AI
  8. Images: Midjourney
  9. Images: Playground AI
  10. Writing: ChatGPT

10 AI tools to grow your ecommerce brand

1. Product images: Pebblely

Pebblely screenshot

"WOW, those photos look amazing. You guys really do have something golden here! This tech is an upgrade over Canva, Photoshop, and others."

Tony, VaporShoppe

You might know AI can generate images. But do you know AI can already generate realistic images of your product? Pebblely uses AI to generate beautiful images of your products in different settings. You can turn a single boring image into multiple brand-building marketing assets.

How to use it:

  1. Upload a photo of your product
  2. Pick a theme or describe a background
  3. Generate and download high-quality images

Features:

  • Automatic background removal
  • Unlimited high-quality images
  • 20 free themes
  • Customizable themes

Pricing:

  • Free 40 images
  • $19/month or $179/year
  • $39/month or $379/year

Try Pebblely today

2. Customer service: Tidio

Tidio screenshot

"The app helps to make sales when we are not available to answer questions. Gives discounts and really has reduced our need for a staff member to constantly monitor the account."

Belkys K., CEO and President of a small business

One of the biggest demands I have heard from merchants is having AI for answering basic customer support questions that current automated responses don’t do well at. Tidio, a customer support app, recently added AI Response Bots to help merchants spend less time on customer support while giving customers faster responses. It has 1,581 reviews and an average rating of 4.7 on the Shopify App Store.

How to use it:

  • Group questions into categories
  • Prepare questions for the bots
  • Set up self-learning (without code)

Features:

  • Uses AI to understand what customers are saying (even when there are typos)
  • Provides relevant information within seconds
  • Measures if responses were helpful to the customer
  • Improves responses based on past conversations

Pricing:

  • Tidio AI Response Bots are only available on the $289/month plan
  • 2 months free if you pay yearly

3. Subscription retention: Stay Ai

Stay Ai screenshot

"After installing Stay Ai, our revenue from subscriptions grew by 73%. Hard to argue against that."

Cameron Faist, Director of Ecommerce at Aura Bora

Stay Ai is an AI subscription app that keeps your customers happy and subscribed—used by top brands like OLIPOP, Obvi, and Lifeboost. While it has many features, I’m highlighting only its newly-announced AI functionalities.

How to use it:

  • Offer a gift when a customer is predicted to churn
  • Upsell when a customer isn’t likely to churn
  • Identify cohorts of customers that would likely churn
  • Show personalized product recommendations

Features:

  • 1:1 personalized subscriber loyalty
  • Predictive analytics for customers who might churn
  • Product recommendations and customer portal personalization

Pricing:

  • $499/month and 1% + $0.19/transaction

4. Product recommendations: Octane AI

Octane AI screenshot

"In January alone, Jones Road Beauty’s TikTok and Octane AI quiz funnel drove 50,000 new emails, with 36,000 of them being net new email signups. If you think about and analyze the incremental impact that that can have on your business long-term is pretty amazing.”

Cody Plofker, CMO of Jones Road Beauty

In a retail store, a shop assistant can help you find the right products. On your website, Octane AI is that helpful shop assistant. It allows you to build quizzes for product recommendations, color matching (think makeup), fit style finder (think dresses), and more. It then uses the data and AI to highlight personalized product recommendations, share relevant content and reviews, and answer specific questions.

How to use it:

  • Set up quizzes to understand your customers and their preferences
  • Collect email and SMS
  • Show personalized product recommendations
  • Send personalized emails automatically

Features:

  • Build on-brand quizzes with advanced logic branching
  • A/B testing for popups
  • Send automated personalized emails via Klaviyo

Pricing:

  • Its AI features are on the Octane Plus plan, which starts at $200/month (for stores with less than $1m annual revenue)

5. Internationalization: Transcy

Transcy screenshot

“We have customers from Japan and France, which is why we hope to translate at least some of the important functional pages into Japanese and French for them. Transcy helped us with it and surpassed our expectations - it translated everything flawlessly. The language switcher is highly customizable.”

iVANKY

If you are selling internationally, you would want to have localized websites for each region or country. Transcy uses AI to translate your online store into 100+ languages with a single click. It can even localize the currency and images so that shoppers outside of your home country are more likely to buy from your store. On the Shopify App Store, Transcy has 4,816 reviews and an average rating of 4.9!

How to use it:

  • Translate all store content and third-party apps
  • Display different images for each market
  • Sell in local currencies

Features:

  • Translation to 100+ languages
  • Multilingual SEO
  • Conversion of prices into 160+ currencies
  • Localized images based on shopper location

Pricing:

  • Free
  • $9.90/month
  • $19.9/month
  • $39.9/month

6. Inventory forecasting: Bucephalus

Bucephalus screenshot

"This app has changed the way I run my inventory for my business. It has helped me to analyze, understand and organize my inventory which is the most important part of my business. I keep track of many SKUs (over 500) so this helps me prioritize ordering and planning the best sellers."

Toscana USA

Bucephalus seems to be a fairly new app but inventory forecasting is so painful to so many merchants and I have not seen any app do it. Bucephalus, also a Shopify app, uses AI to forecast your sales and tell you how much to buy and when. The team are ex-Amazonians and Ivy League professors who are experts in supply chain.

How to use it:

  • Forecast sales for the coming weeks and months
  • Set up alerts when your inventory reaches certain levels
  • Monitor your inventory level by location and vendors

Features:

  • AI-powered time series forecasts
  • Inventory optimization
  • Custom email alerts for inventory
  • Real-time inventory reporting

Pricing:

  • 60-day free trial
  • Need to schedule a demo for pricing

7. Upsell: Vanga AI

Vanga AI screenshot

"We tried many post-purchase apps but Vanga proves to be the most efficient one. Our upsell rate is 19,58%, that's huge."

InaEssentials UK

One way to grow your revenue is to increase your Average Order Value (AOV) by encouraging shoppers to buy more in each of their orders. Vanga AI does this for you automatically via upsells on the cart and post-checkout. It learns from your first 100 successful upsells to show better recommendations.

How to use it:

  • Add upsells to your cart and Thank You pages
  • Let Vanga AI optimize offers automatically

Features:

  • Pre-purchase upsells
  • Automatic one-click upsells after checkout
  • Thank You page upsells

Pricing:

  • $9/month + 5% of upsell revenue
  • $99/month + 2.5% of upsell revenue

8. Images: Midjourney

Midjourney screenshot

"This girl doesn't exist! - Yep, either you don't have money for your next Photo Shoot or you can't find the right photo stock to match your ad concept, AI is there to help you achieve it. Our new GothRider® Belle™ Coffee ad campaign is going to be entirely driven by AI."

Phil Kyprianou, Founder of GothRider Coffee

If you are looking for images but don’t need your products in them, you could use Midjourney to generate a wide variety of images, like Phil did for his ad campaign.

How to use it:

  • Type /imagine prompt: followed by the description of the image you want
  • Create variations of images you like
  • Upscale to higher quality
  • Midjourney can feel quite complicated to new users, so check out their guide

Features:

  • Unlimited image generation with a prompt
  • Blend two images together
  • Upscale images to higher quality
  • Fast mode (i.e. faster generation)

Pricing:

  • Free 25 credits
  • $10/month
  • $30/month
  • $60/month
  • 20% discount if you pay yearly

9. Images: Playground AI

Playground screenshot

"I just can't get enough of all these woolitize Ai images generated from Playground AI. Wish I have the skill to make them and sell them. This is a great way to get inspiration for art and craft projects."

Zeng, Founder of Femme Stock

If you find Midjourney too hard to understand, my favorite alternative is Playground AI. It has a much friendlier user interface, and you get 1,000 images for free every day. Also, it has a gallery of popular generated images, which you can remix so that you do not have to start from scratch.

How to use it:

  • Start from scratch or remix an existing image
  • Enter your prompt and negative prompt
  • Optional: Select a filter and upload an image
  • Experiment with various settings
  • Generate and edit

Features:

  • 2,000 images per day with Stable Diffusion
  • Image editing via text and inpainting
  • Image upscaling
  • Private mode

Pricing:

  • Free 1,000 images every day (which will appear on your public profile)
  • $15/month
  • $10/month DALL-E add-on

10. Writing: ChatGPT

ChatGPT screenshot

"So far, ChatGPT has written creative direction, headlines and copy for ads I'm running, written landing pages (after a lot of training), given me outlines for buyer personas and written outlines for the last 4 briefs I've put together.

Brent Stirling, Director of Growth at Carbon6

Finally, ChatGPT is worth a mention because many people are not realizing its full potential. It is not just a fancy chatbot. One of its superpowers is being able to remember previous messages in the same conversation so that it can give you better outputs. For example, if you asked for a product description and got one, you could ask ChatGPT to make it funnier, shorten it, or even rewrite it until you are satisfied.

How to use it:

  • Ask for product copy, marketing slogans, content ideas, and more
  • Give it additional information before asking it to write something (example)
  • Ask it to pretend to be someone great at marketing (example)

Features:

  • Fast content and ideas generation
  • Memories of previous messages in the same conversation (up to about 3,000 words)
  • Quick research (but requires verification)

Pricing:

  • Free
  • $20/month (limited availability)

Gain an edge over others

I wrote an entire essay explaining why marketers should be using AI tools. Essentially, AI is changing the way we do business and market. The people who can leverage AI as soon as possible will have an edge over others.

The above are just 10 tools you can use to get started with AI today. I’m certain there will be hundreds and thousands of new AI tools launching this year. Keep an eye out for them!

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