10 Ways to Effectively Use AI in Small eCommerce Businesses

Technically, not using AI at all is way better than using AI wrongly. Presently, there’s a lot of hype surrounding the use of AI in eCommerce business. With these here practical tips, you can cut through the hype to get real measurable results in your eCommerce business. Using AI wisely is actually the key.
 
1. First Experiment with Free AI Chatbots 

Experts recommend that using free AI in your business is really helpful. Until you find at least one direct benefit of using advanced AI in your business, it is best to stick with free AI tools. Versatile AI Chabots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini do render tremendous service to business owners. Even though these Chatbots are not perfect, they do get the job done, even at experimental stages.
 
2. Widely Brainstorm with AI

Business owners can engage AI as brainstorming partners. It can be effectively used to brainstorm product names, YouTube headlines, character names, character backstories, social media tags, and much more. You must be careful though because AIs aren’t quite perfect at drawing engineering diagrams from text-based prompts. They can make things that are pretty or seem real, but they're not really too good at diagramming concepts.
 
3. Start Small but Scale Gradually
 
Sometimes even common sense dictates this. You can always start small and scale gradually using AI tools. You can deploy AI effectively for setting up cloud services, building out IT infrastructure, and lots more. Make adding AI a carefully managed process. You must know it well including its strengths and weaknesses, before you do much with it. Get to know what works for you and what doesn't. Look out for those things that take too much of your time and use AI effectively to reduce the time and even costs.

4. Value Time as Your Key AI Metric
 
Just as we measure ROI as a key metric to make business investments, we can also measure time return as a key metric in the deployment of AI. You can for instance be assured using time metric, how much time is freed up when AI is deployed. You’ll know exactly how much time your AI project saves for you when taking management decisions. You can from there be able to guesstimate how much value AI provides to your business to justify its cost of deployment.
 
5. Carefully Pair Your Expertise with AI 

AI is no replacement for your own expertise. Use AI to complement it effectively. No need looking to use AI for headcount reduction, especially if you're a small business. Granted AIs can do a lot for a business, but they're also classic management challenges. It helps to value them as very bright but annoyingly troublesome helpers. To succeed with them, they require constant guidance and course correction because they’re tools after all. Chatbots should for instance have a very low degree of autonomy because from one prompt to the next, they could get confused along the way.

6. Avoid AI Coding Unless you Know Coding Yourself 

AI coding can be astonishing, game-changing, and have an ROI almost beyond comprehension but there’s still a snag. AI coding tools can also be incredibly stupid, thickheaded, stubborn, and do at times take exactly the wrong approach to any problem. In such scenario, AI can confuse you and compound matters if you don’t know anything about coding yourself. If you know coding, you can actually act anytime you run into a snag or need to fix something AI is not doing right. 

7. Use AI for Quick Analytics Reports 

Feeding data into AI can always give you quick analysis. You can for instance use QuickBooks' reporting tools to generate a report showing the yearly P&L for the last five years. When you export it as a PDF into the free tier of ChatGPT, you can input questions and get quick answers about your business overview. Depending on the business questions you feed into the process, you can get some visual analysis in form of charts/graphs showing income, expenses, and net income trends by years.

8. Don't Spend on AI Just Because It's Hot 

It is not advisable to invest in AI because everyone is hyping it as really hot new thing around. Invest in AI only if you can see how it will benefit your business. Exact same way you wouldn't spend on any piece of equipment just because it's cool. You only buy equipment because it opens a new business opportunity for you. If it also helps you improve productivity, or helps you reduce costs, it’s ok to have. AI should be treated exactly the same way. So, if you don't know how AI will help your business, it is best not to spend on it. Simple! You don't have to spend on anything AI until you do know how it will help out.
 
9. Make AI Spend Monthly, not Yearly
 
This is more of a money tip and less of operational tip. Significantly, AI costs directly impact the resources of a business. Therefore, scheduling and budgeting for the cost of AI is good for the cash flow of the business. For this reason, until you're completely sure you want to integrate a given AI service into your business long-term, it is best not to sign up for a yearly commitment. Granted some AI services may require yearly payment commitment, but you must carefully weigh this commitment against your cash flow if you must use such AI tools. If you make monthly commitment, you may pay a bit more but the costs blend more easily into your cash flow. 

10. Clearly Define What You Consider a Win

Time is the most important metric in AI use. AI tools are good if they can help you make some tangible time savings. If you have few hands as employees, AI tools can be really handy to take care of routine and repeated business chores. Any AI tools that help to reduce time on a project directly impacts costs as well. Getting a job done faster increases productivity and saves costs on time. That's how you look at AI by having your eyes on such tangible wins.