The shopping journey is not any longer a transparent and linear path. Brands and retailers can interact with consumers in various ways and at different touch points that twist and intersect — online, on social and IRL. However the endgame is evident: brands have to lure shoppers to their sites in the event that they need to see a conversion.

Meanwhile, shoppers are attempting to find fashion inspiration. And in addition they want a personalised experience that’s smooth, fun and pleasant. But are you able to encourage customers while also driving conversions? Rohan Deuskar, founder and chief executive officer of Stylitics, the shoppable content platform provider, says yes. Here, Deuskar discusses e-commerce trends, consumer behavior, and the way the industry is entering a second phase of AI-powered personalization.

WWD: With so many challenges facing the retail industry today, what are the most important wins these corporations can easily implement to enhance their e-commerce?

Rohan Deuskar: One in all the most important untapped assets that retailers have is the shoppers they’ve already dropped at their site, often at great expense. Getting these customers to explore more categories, have a look at more products, and ultimately buy an extra item could make the difference between missing your numbers and having a record 12 months. There are several specific moments in the shopper journey where a retailer can turn a transactional, discount-driven, two-minute session into one which is inspiring, fun, personalized and generates a much larger purchase throughout the same session.

Style inspiration done right can create an experience akin to browsing Instagram, Pinterest, or perhaps a fashion magazine. Our customers have found that showing personalized outfit recommendations on product detail pages can shift the patron’s mindset away from feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of products. There’s a misconception that providing inspiration, editorial content, or engaging experiences like mix and match or an outfit builder will distract the patron from converting. Every customer survey we’ve ever done has reinforced that shoppers will buy more in the event that they are inspired, even when it takes a small detour into enthusiastic about looks and bundles slightly than simply shopping multiple sites to search out the perfect price on a selected product or style.

We now have seen retailers and types dramatically improve the variety of categories their visitors shop just by showing them outfits, looks, bundles, gift sets and other collections of products that break them out of their transactional mindset and habits. Average order value, conversion rate, units per transaction, categories per transaction, time on site, and lots of more core metrics could be vastly improved just by introducing more inspiration across the location experience.

WWD: Everyone talks about making a more personalized e-commerce experience, but what does this really appear to be, and the way does AI impact personalization?

R.D.: We at the moment are entering what I feel to be the second era of personalization in retail. The initial phase of personalization involved attempting to suit customers into predefined cohorts and providing them with results based on the behavior of those cohorts. The challenge, and the rationale why many retailers find themselves having invested heavily in personalization without seeing transformational results, is that shoppers can’t be confined to a single persona or type. As individuals, our product preferences, price sensitivity, decision-making speed, return habits and various other aspects are influenced by our mood, the season, specific events or occasions and lots of other variables.

The following phase of personalization, which we’re implementing, revolves around understanding the moment, the contextual behavior inside a session, the time of 12 months, and other temporal and seasonal aspects. By also making an allowance for behavioral cues, category-specific observations, and data points, we will deliver personalized recommendations and experiences that align with a customer’s intent in that individual moment. In other words, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all customer profile. Each customer possesses different personas, and the important thing to effective personalization lies in identifying which mode or persona they’re in at any given moment. By providing them with the perfect results and experiences for that specific context, we avoid trapping them in a single mode or persona indefinitely.

The applications of artificial intelligence along with personalization are incredibly profound. Consider the capabilities of huge language models like ChatGPT. These models excel at providing generalized information and high-quality guidance based on minimal contextual input. As an example, if I ask for a well-designed workout plan based on my age and weight, it could possibly deliver a reasonably good advice. Nonetheless, the true power of personalization in retail lies in unlocking truly personalized style profiles and shopper data sets by harnessing the conversational and analytical capabilities of advanced AI models. This level of personalization can mimic the experience of a talented personal stylist, customer support agent, or in-store associate.

WWD: How is Stylitics solving retailers’ inventory management issues?

R.D.: When a retailer has bought an excessive amount of of a selected product and wishes to maneuver that inventory, the perfect technique to do it’s to style it with on-trend or bestselling products that pair beautifully with it in a wide range of outfits. We call this “last-minute merchandising.” Showing those looks across dozens of relevant product pages and high-traffic pages brings more eyeballs to the product in the perfect light. Additional features like labels, spotlights, etc., draw the patron to that product. Our systems allow a merchant to do this on demand but additionally to automate the whole lot based on inventory and priority-driven smart boosting, automated labels and other techniques.

This also works within the reverse — retailers often need to decelerate the sales of a selected product to have inventory for just a few more weeks within the season. You possibly can hide or suppress products as well. Stylitics is synced to over 600 every day feeds that we custom-map through our feed ingestion engine, so we all know the actions to take based on inventory levels, margins, etc.

WWD: How have the changes in digital marketing impacted e-commerce retailers?

R.D.: Retailers often tell us: “Customer acquisition channels are dearer than ever and fewer effective than ever.” The crux of that is the race to the underside with transactional commerce vs. inspirational commerce.

Product ads that follow you around social platforms or 40 percent off sale ads should not going to drive real revenue over time, although they drive traffic sometimes. We consider that engaging the shopper through brand inspiration, style advice, and romancing key products after which — most significantly — continuing to offer them with that inspiration site-wide is the formula for top lifetime customer value and marketing channel effectiveness. There are lots of tactical ways you possibly can improve that journey to help conversion, nevertheless it must be rooted in inspiration, not the usual commoditized product ads and sale announcements. Sales and product ads are high quality and could be effective, but as an element of the marketing campaign, not as the only value proposition.

WWD: What does the longer term of digital merchandising appear to be, and the way will we see Stylitics’ platform evolve?

R.D.: We work with and support 1000’s of merchants on a every day basis across our nearly 200 brand and retail customers. We’re committed to further equipping them with transformational tools and useful and actionable data that lets them engage with consumers more effectively.

In the approaching months, we will likely be introducing latest tools for merchants to give you the chance to realize visibility into market trends in real time and to take quick (or automated) actions that drive higher sales and better profitability inside seven days.