A pragmatist’s guide to GenAI in e-commerce

The highest utilization use cases focus more on productivity and efficiency and, to some extent, automation. Many companies have managed to accelerate the creative process – from content generation and optimization to testing and adaptation – and thus reduce the time to market from weeks to days or even hours. We can imagine that applications supporting these use cases will become more and more standardized over time, which means that in the future, e-commerce teams will be better able to rely on third-party providers of these functions.

More promising and ambitious cases – such as personalization, dynamic pricing and predictive analytics – have proven to be more complex, which explains the lower level of implementation. These may be better candidates for an in-house solution, especially since they are more likely to be the basis for sustainable competitive advantage.

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The role of ready-made GenAI assistants

GenAI will have a profound impact on the transformation of the entire e-commerce value chain. But for e-commerce managers, the big question is: where in the stack will these innovations sit?

At the top of the stack are Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and others are racing to become more competent in consumer-centric, chat-first general intelligence experiences. E-commerce managers should encourage team members to take advantage of the out-of-the-box capabilities of these tools to increase their productivity. They should celebrate and share successes as opportunities continue to develop.

Product owners can use these tools to simulate the experiences of different users and then use the results to refine their roadmap. For designers, these tools allow each design to be tested from the perspective of different people, serving as both panel and expert guides in real time, with extensions to design execution. For engineers, these tools accelerate software development with code completion and real-time assistance with tool and platform configuration. For architects, the tools offer guidance on the appropriate technology architecture to accommodate platform changes or new integrations and technologies. Finally, these tools give analysts the ability to quickly understand all key site metrics and experience across the funnel, as well as provide pathways for the e-commerce team.

The role of enhanced GenAI features

As GenAI continues to evolve, large technology companies will likely integrate specific features into their existing platforms to improve user experience and provide more intelligent, personalized solutions. Figure 3 shows what e-commerce teams can expect from these platforms. Some of these capabilities – such as enhanced search functionality and intelligent product recommendations – are in their early stages, but have already been unveiled as core GenAI capabilities on these major marketplaces.