Key components of AI/Natural Language include:

• Natural Language Understanding (NLU): This involves the ability of a computer system to comprehend and interpret the meaning of text or speech. It includes tasks such as part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and semantic parsing.
• Natural Language Generation (NLG): This aspect deals with the generation of human-like text or speech based on a given input. NLG is used in applications like chatbots, content creation, and automated report generation.
• Natural Language Query (NLQ): This technology provides the ability to access data, in almost any structure, create dictionaries that extend link synonyms from content within the data structure and allow for ad hoc Q&A naturally. 
• Machine Translation: This involves the conversion of text from one language to another. Systems like Google Translate are examples of machine translation applications.
• Speech Recognition: This is the process of converting spoken language into written text. Applications like Siri, Google Assistant, and speech-to-text software utilize this technology.
• Dialog Systems and Chatbots: These systems engage in conversations with users, either through text or speech, and aim to provide relevant and helpful responses. They are used in customer service, virtual assistants, and more.
• Sentiment Analysis: This involves determining the sentiment or emotion expressed in a piece of text. It’s commonly used for tasks like social media monitoring and customer feedback analysis.
• Text Summarization: This involves generating concise and coherent summaries of longer pieces of text. It’s used in tasks like summarizing news articles or research papers.
• Question Answering: This involves providing accurate answers to questions posed in natural language. Systems like IBM’s Watson are examples of question-answering applications.
• Language Modeling: This is a fundamental task in NLP where a model is trained to predict the next word in a sentence given the context of the preceding words. This is the basis for many advanced NLP applications.

NLP has a wide range of applications, including but not limited to:

• Customer service chatbots
• eCommerce search, recommendations, and personalization
• Language translation services
• Sentiment analysis for social media monitoring
• Medical record analysis for healthcare
• Personalized content recommendation
• Automatic text summarization for news articles
• Speech-to-text and text-to-speech systems
• Virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant

Overall, NLP is a crucial aspect of AI that enables machines to interact with humans in a more natural and intuitive way, opening up a wide range of possibilities for automation and enhanced user experiences. And this is what separates EasyAsk from our competitors. EasyAsk is a true AI/Natural Language search, run by a true Natural Language Processing engine.

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• Speech Recognition: AI/Natural Language driven speech recognition technology converts spoken language into written text. This is the foundational step for enabling mobile voice commerce. It allows users to interact with their devices and applications using their voice.
• Intent Recognition: NLP algorithms are used to understand the intent behind a user’s input. This helps the system comprehend what the user is trying to achieve. For instance, if a user says, “Order a large pepperoni pizza,” the AI should recognize the intent to place a pizza order.
• Context Understanding: NLP models are capable of maintaining context within a conversation. This is essential for providing coherent responses and understanding follow-up questions or statements. It helps in creating a more natural and engaging conversation.
• Personalization and User Profiling: AI-powered systems can learn from user interactions to provide personalized experiences. They can remember preferences, order history, and other relevant information to enhance the customer’s experience.
• Product Recommendations: Using machine learning algorithms, the system can analyze a user’s preferences and behavior to make relevant product recommendations. For example, if a user frequently orders vegetarian dishes, the system can suggest vegetarian options first.
• Order Management and Tracking: AI can facilitate the entire transaction process, from order placement to payment processing. It can also provide updates on the status of the order and estimated delivery times.
• Natural Language Generation (NLG): NLG is a technology that allows the system to generate human-like responses. This is crucial for creating a conversational and engaging experience for users.
• Multi-language Support: NLP models can be trained to understand and respond in multiple languages, enabling a broader user base to engage in conversational commerce.
• Voice Authentication and Security: AI can be used for voice biometrics to authenticate users. This adds an extra layer of security to mobile voice commerce applications.
• Customer Support and Assistance: AI-powered chatbots and voice assistants can provide instant support, answer queries, and guide users through the purchasing process. This can significantly enhance customer satisfaction.
• Feedback and Improvement: AI can analyze user feedback to improve the conversational experience over time. It can learn from mistakes and adapt to user preferences.

By incorporating AI and NLP into mobile voice conversational commerce, e-retailers can create more intuitive, efficient, and personalized experiences for their customers, ultimately driving higher conversion rates, significantly higher revenue, and customer satisfaction.

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We currently live in a time where five generations make up the overwhelming majority of our country: Baby Boomers I (1946-1954), Baby Boomers II (1955-1965), Generation X (1966-1976), Generation Y (1977-1994), and Generation Z (1995-2012). And Millennials bridge Gen Y and Gen Z. These are the main generations that make up your customer base. That’s a 76-year age gap you’re trying to connect with. A rather daunting task.

Over this 76-year gap, the way people search has changed dramatically. Baby Boomers up through Generation X went to a library and owned an encyclopedia. Generation Y started this way but adapted to current forms of search via the internet. Early generations hoarded multiple maps in their glovebox. Later generations relied on printing the specific route you needed before you departed (anyone remember Map Quest?). Today we instantly look up directions complete with turn-by-turn instructions. Yes, there are still people who go to the library, own an encyclopedia, and use paper maps, but their numbers are dwindling.

These generational side-effects also change the way we all do one common thing: Shop.

Shopping is something that will never go away, but it will always change. From Sears and Roebuck’s catalogs beginning in 1886, to mega malls in the ’90s, to having your order delivered same-day by a drone. And it is the way people shop that brings us to the point of this very long-winded diatribe.

People shop online. The way they find products is through search. Whether it’s on Google to find information, on your maps to find a location, or on your eCommerce site to find a product – Search is the one aspect that is constant. How people search is not, and much of it goes back to the generational differences. Some will type, while others will speak. Some will begin with old Keyword search (i.e Nike Shoes), and then drill down via Navigation (i.e. choosing a color, choosing a size, choosing price-point, etc.). Others will say exactly what they want, using Natural Language Search, to begin the search (i.e. Red and White Nike basketball shoes under $150). Some will search on their laptops, others on their tablets, while a full 67% will search on their phones.

The point is this: Your audience is made up of many different generations, and each has their own way of doing something as simple as Search. There is no correct or incorrect way… but you, as an eCommerce Retailer, better be able to return the right results. Here at EasyAsk, our Artificial Intelligence/Natural Language Search Engine allows us to span that generational gap.

Update: We will be putting the generations to the test as we ask a member of each to go through our Search Challenge. Results coming soon… Stay tuned!

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Voice as a Computing Interface is exponentially faster than typing, it is easier than typing, and computers are finally intelligent enough to understand 95% of what is said… compared to just 70% in 2010.  And people are using it more and more.  Just as Responsive Web Design has become a necessity since more people search on their phones and tablets, so too is having a Natural Language Search Engine that understands what these millions of shoppers are saying.

Mary Meeker, a former Wall Street securities analyst and venture capitalist, as well as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world according to Forbes, recently released a 213-page Internet Trends Report for her firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  In it she releases some remarkable findings on how the internet is trending today, including the graphic above.

As the internet continues to evolve and increase in intelligence, we as a people need to evolve with it.  We’ve gone from giant desktops, to thin laptops, to smartphones with more intelligence than those giant desktops ever could dream of having.  As the capabilities increased we’re moving from typed keywords to natural language voice entry.  And thanks to these increases in technology and capability, we’ve reached the tipping point in voice computing.

To see more of Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report, click here.

This message brought to you by your friendly, neighborhood, EasyAsk.

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To make your site tolerant of misspellings and the like, you have two options: Either manually enter all the various misspellings and whatnot into your search engine, which will take you God-knows-how-long… Or, the better approach, use an eCommerce search engine that offers Automatic Spell Correction and stemming against terms in your product catalog.

This gives you out-of-the-box tolerance of these visitor errors, enabling them to find the right products and keeping them on your site as opposed to going to your competitors.

Watch this one-minute video and see how Coldwater Creek uses EasyAsk’s automatic spell correction to convert more visitors into customers.

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To make your site tolerant of misspellings and the like, you have two options: Either manually enter all the various misspellings and whatnot into your search engine, which will take you God-knows-how-long… Or, the better approach, use an e-commerce search engine that offers Automatic Spell Correction and stemming against terms in your product catalog.

This gives you out-of-the-box tolerance of these visitor errors, enabling them to find the right products and keeping them on your site as opposed to going to your competitors.

This short video demonstrates EasyAsk’s automatic spell correction, on customer site Coldwater Creek. This tool, among others, helps e-commerce companies save time and money as well as increase customer conversion rates.

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With it being fairly obvious that price is so important, offering a discounted price should be the ultimate money maker… as long as your customers know you are offering discounted items.  So I sat down with Ben Rudnick, Director of Field Technical Services at EasyAsk, to discuss how a retailer could use EasyAsk to entice buyers through promotions and business rules.

Here is what he had to say:

“This price sensitivity can be used to drive sales through targeted email campaigns, sorting product results and more with EasyAsk.  For example, for a price conscious customer who buys Tools, a set of products could be selected such as “Tools on sale with discount over 60%” and with a single link from within the email, the site product search could deliver those products, sorted by decreasing discount percentage.  With EasyAsk a single campaign landing page can serve many email campaigns for the future.  The products are selected for each campaign within the EasyAsk’s Natural Language tools.  For each email campaign the link can point to the same landing page, passing the EasyAsk campaign selection as part of the search. In addition the request passed to EasyAsk could also sort by your choice of: price, margin, discount percentage, price sensitivity score and more.”

EasyAsk is more than just eCommerce Site Search and Navigation.  It’s Natural Language engine puts the power in the hands of the Merchandisers, and the examples Ben mentioned are just a few of the many ways that EasyAsk can help your eCommerce Site do its job to the best of its abilities.  Come see what else we can help you accomplish.  Visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.

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Enjoy!

These issues they bring up, whether it be usability, eCommerce Site Search problems, issues with mobile, homepage issues, content issues, whatever they may be, we at EasyAsk can help make sure your website does its job to the best of its abilities.  Let us show you how.  Visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.

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Nutshell:

Ninety-nine percent of new customers will not buy from your eCommerce site on their first visit.  Of those new customers who abandon their cart, one quarter of them will not return.  The percentage of returning customers who abandon their shopping cart is about 50-50 on who returns to buy and who does not.  The average time delay between a customers first visit and them buying from your site is about 20 minutes.  And 72 percent of visitors will make a purchase in the first 12 hours.  As far as understanding cart abandonment in a 28-day period, one-time abandoners have an 18 percent chance of making a purchase, serial abandoners have a 48 percent chance of making a purchase, and Recent Goal Abandoners (meaning they’ve already made a purchase before) have a 57 percent chance of making a purchase.  Abandonment rates are higher among those with lower totals in their shopping cart.

This is just more fuel for you, the eCommerce Merchant, to use in your defense against shopping cart abandonment.  The more you know, the more you can do to help increase your conversion rates and average order sizes.  To learn more about what else you can do to increase your conversion rates and average order sizes, visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.

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The most commonly used ideas for the Shopping Cart are:

No more than 5 pages to complete the check-out process. The sweet spot for input fields is between 21-28. Prominent features to use are multiple shipping options, express check-out, guest check-out, gift cards, and promo codes/coupons. Go with the standard of white background and black text for the majority of it, but adding some color for flare helps when it’s in the correct place. And the use of smarter technology helps to determine what credit card is used based on the first four numbers, and can automatically fill in city, state and country based on the zip code.

These are just a few tips to help convert your shoppers to buyers in the final stages of the sale process. To see what else EasyAsk can do to help convert your shoppers into buyers, visit our website or call us at 781-402-5641.

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