Want to Power Your Retail Business with Gen AI? You Need a Modern Ecommerce Platform

Since the emergence of ChatGPT, major retailers have been keen to adopt generative AI to enhance both physical and digital operations. 

Amazon is using Gen AI to summarize product reviews, making it easier for customers to digest feedback. It’s also introduced a shopping assistant to provide personalized recommendations. Walmart's shopping app now features Gen-AI-powered search, improving the accuracy and relevance of search results. And Adore Me is letting customers use AI image generation to design their own lingerie.

If you're looking for ways to incorporate Gen AI to drive efficiencies and expand the possible, a solid digital foundation is a prerequisite. In this piece, we’ll explain how a modern ecommerce platform gives you the flexibility needed to experiment with Gen AI use cases and realize your Gen AI ambitions. But first, let’s take a closer look at how a next-gen platform differs from its legacy predecessors.

Background: How Does a Modern Ecommerce Platform Improve on Legacy Alternatives?

Monolithic ecommerce platforms have dominated the retail landscape for years, promising a single-vendor solution for everything from inventory management to checkout.

The problem: these platforms aren’t built to support fast-paced customization. Making a change in one area can impact the rest of your system. That’s a problem in the context of Gen AI, where experimentation is key to find use cases that work for your brand.

A modern ecommerce platform offers a more flexible and scalable alternative. At the core is the MACH architecture – an acronym for Microservices (i.e., independent software functions), API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. This architecture lets you mix and match components from different vendors (from search to checkout to review aggregation) in order to build a best-of-breed composable platform.

The overall result is a more modular approach to ecommerce. And whenever industry changes call for adjustments, you can update specific components without disrupting your site’s performance.

These advantages are key to Gen AI experimentation. But there’s another important benefit to note: access to more customer and operational data. 

With a modern ecommerce platform, you can choose microservices optimized for specific data management and analytics functions; which are often more effective than their monolithic counterparts.

You can also access any number of data sources to fuel insights. And paired with robust data governance practices, you can ensure that your data remains clean and well structured. This way, you’ll be better positioned to effectively leverage Gen AI.

Modern Platforms Make it Easier to Experiment with AI Use Cases

Clean, organized data is important for every kind of AI – but when it comes to Gen AI, it’s absolutely essential. That’s because this technology learns from your data to create new content, from text to images. So the output is only as good as the data you provide. It’s a lot like putting gas in a Ferrari: without premium fuel, performance will suffer.

Thanks to the capabilities we’ve mentioned, a modern ecommerce platform makes it easier to give Gen AI the data it needs. That, in turn, creates room for experimentation that yields high-quality results. Gen AI tools can:

- Create and personalize product descriptions. 
- Create personalized product demonstrations.
- Craft quality marketing collateral. 
- Answer customer FAQs with natural language processing. 
- Comprehend complex search terms to return or recommend exactly the products you are looking for.
- Mock up product concepts based on a brief.

One of the best parts? Because you’re not locked into a monolithic platform, you can quickly test each tool and swap out ones that don’t meet your needs. That agility and flexibility is key to staying competitive in this space.

You Can Implement Gen AI at Your Own Pace

By supporting Gen AI, a modern ecommerce platform can expand your knowledge, creativity, and freedom. But that freedom can be daunting. You might find yourself going from managing a single platform to juggling several Gen-AI-powered microservices, which can be overwhelming at first glance.

The good news, though, is that you don’t have to implement everything at once. Instead, it’s often better to start small. Prioritize testing one or two Gen AI tools that address an inefficiency or meet a customer need. Then, take some time to measure the impact before deciding whether you’re ready to embrace more of this technology. 

For example, you might experiment with a Gen AI search tool to see if it improves conversion. If the results are satisfying, you can then gradually apply Gen AI to additional pain points, such as marketing copywriting or customer support.

If you're not sure where to start, an experienced partner can be your guide. They’ll help you pinpoint the most promising Gen AI opportunities for your brand, whether that's boosting customer service or personalizing the shopping experience. Then, they’ll help you make the decision to build custom software (say, with the help of AI agents) or consider third-party microservices – and rapidly test each tool to more quickly realize value. This way, you can modernize your platform and implement Gen AI at a manageable pace.

Future-Proof Your Brand with a Next-Gen Platform

Gen AI is changing ecommerce at a breakneck pace. And we’re only seeing the early stages of its potential. 

Now is the time to invest in a platform that lets you capitalize on this opportunity – and incorporate new technology in five or ten years. With a modern ecommerce platform under your belt, you can stake out a place at the industry frontier.

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