Why SMEs should no longer do without AI-based product recommendations

Comment by Denis Rathig

Sensei and Magento enable end-to-end analysis of content and experiences

Amazon led the way last year: AI-based - and therefore automated - product recommendations intelligently support customers throughout their shopping journey and their search for relevant products. Thanks to the integration of Sensei and Magento, what was previously the preserve of large stores is now within reach for small and medium-sized companies in particular. Experts agree that AI-based product recommendations are a very important step towards personalized shopping experiences.

In the past, it was simply too costly and resource-intensive for many small businesses to make effective use of artificial intelligence for automated product recommendations. Even though rule-based recommendations have been available in Magento for some time, this feature has now been fundamentally revised with the integration of Adobe Sensei. Store operators were previously able to offer "recommended" items as part of their product range, their search and on the checkout pages. These product recommendations were usually controlled by "non-intelligent" technologies that pointed to randomly selected items based on criteria such as tags or popularity. With the latest Magento version, online retailers can now intelligently automate their product recommendations and thus make their customers' e-commerce experience noticeably more positive.

Against this backdrop, for example, more sophisticated end-to-end analyses of content and experiences that lead from clicks to conversions or subscriptions are possible. Such AI-supported processes improve customer engagement, which in turn leads to increased conversion and ultimately to more sales. After all, store operators can only improve the shopping experience, for example through personalized "next-best-actions" recommendations, if they not only know their customers' customer journey, but also understand it. Magento users now have access to Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target specifically for this purpose. With the help of these tools, they can collect relevant data and make personalized recommendations on this basis. Thanks to the integration, store operators without programming knowledge can also use AI-based drag-and-drop content blocks on websites that offer shoppers similar or complementary goods - depending on which products the respective customer is currently looking at. With regard to these recommendations, the AI tools take into account product availability and user-defined market segments such as website newcomers vs. regular customers or loyalty program users. The extension is available at no additional cost via the Magento Marketplace and is compatible with Magento Commerce 2.3 and higher.