From startups to industry giants like TikTok, companies are increasingly turning to AI to improve online sales. Digital advertising is moving five times faster than inflation in the U.S.; 71% faster than the costs of TV ads. Further, the average customer acquisition cost (CAC) in e-commerce has risen more than 60 percent over the past five years due to surging digital advertising costs, as reported by SimplicityDX in 2023. This creates an urgency for companies to improve converting visitors to customers.
Meet Big Sur AI, a San Francisco Bay Area-based company led by two ex-Googlers, touting an innovative solution with the goal of boosting sales and cutting costs, using proven success with its technology to drive the future of e-commerce.
Big Sur AI offers a comprehensive AI Sales Agent platform that helps retailers personalize shopping experiences, guiding shoppers through interactive, intuitive and tailor-made automation in seconds. The retailer can customize the sales agent to align with their brand identity, ensuring a differentiated and engaging experience for their shoppers.
Big Sur AI's platform can respond in real time to customers' queries, leading them to desired products, no matter how complex. As customers navigate the site, the platform personalizes the experience by intelligently predicting and suggesting the questions they're most likely to ask, helping them overcome objections and make informed purchase decisions.
Using advanced analytics, the AI Sales Agent predicts how site visitors will browse. For example, if someone adds a product to their online cart, the AI Sales Agent can suggest a related product and immediately compare other products - all driven by data, not simply what the vendor thinks customers want.
By enhancing online shopping experiences and increasing conversion rates, Big Sur AI reduces the need for repeated ad spending to attract the same customers, thereby lowering overall CAC. Its comprehensive approach to supporting buyers creates a more efficient way to convert visitors from ad clicks to purchases, in turn increasing the return on ad spending for vendors.
Through its capabilities, Big Sur AI sets itself apart from other generic e-commerce AI tools by offering more than just responsive chatbots.
Unlike generic tools, the AI Sales Agent is customized for each merchant, trained on brand-specific data to create dynamic content -- whether generating landing pages in real-time, personalizing recommendations and more. This tailored approach provides a dynamic shopping experience that has improved sales and secured future visits from customers.
"Every AI Sales Agent is infused with product knowledge specific to the company's brand, so it has all the information on fitting, recommendations, general knowledge and everything else about that brand and its industry. This unbeatable insight is similar to how a sales agent at a physical store location would know how to give a personalized customer experience," says Big Sur AI's co-founder and CEO Vinod Ramachandran.
The demand for this type of technology in the e-commerce industry is there, with a recent Business Insider article noting that TikTok and other retailers are asking how AI can improve how they attract and retain consumers and most importantly guide them through to repeat purchases - questions that the AI Sales Agent platform is already able to answer.
It's trends like these that Ramachandran and others also provide free insight about through Big Sur AI's blog, which features regular updates on topics that e-commerce merchants need to know, with must-read takes on how AI can benefit the bottom line for companies of any size.
Despite plenty of discourse online about the potential perks of AI, it remains a hyped technology with few proven breakthroughs - but Big Sur AI is already delivering proven successes for businesses.
The long, ever-growing client list for Big Sur AI speaks to the platform's successes, as it helped companies including Brunt Workwear, Wyze, Faction Skis, Inglesina and more.
