If designed well, it can work as a two way engine, giving feedback about the profile of the customers that visit the website, and by the click design their interests and the topicality of an issue. Indeed one can plan ones product inventory, distribution, pricing and even launch of new products based on the feed back from a well designed artificial intelligence machine.

In terms of making e-commerce more effective, artificial intelligence has brought in the new concept of contextual commerce. Web designers, like their cousins in the advertising world have always worried about how to make the eyeball stick and how to convert clicking into sales.

An easy way to convert a visit to ones website into a transaction is make it more contextual. And what better way can there be than to bring in the concepts of artificial intelligence to achieve this.

The key to capture and convert larger audiences to the products and services lie in better customisation of the website's content and services, as also a sharper targetting of ecommerce solutions.

Contextual merchandising is the new mantra in the game, and artificial intelligence is the tool. The question boils down to what does it take to make a Web site smart? knows.

To succeed, the solutions should be fresh and valuable and come not with a big price tag.

One solution is to arrange for targetted news and information, dynamically delivered through the webside and via e-mail. This in turn one can deliver to the customers in real time. And if one want to ensure revenue flows one need to take care of three important steps.

First, get as contextually close as possible to the customer. This can be achieved by intelligent searching through your data bases, customer profiles and the like. And work intelligently in context.

One also needs to locate the right buyers at the right time with the right products. Naturally the site needs to impress the visitor with its quality and its ability to come close to his needs that he would revisit the site again and again. This tackles the issue of customer retention and conversion rates. Ideally one should aim to ensure that customers visit the site everyday!

Another approach is to enable the visitor to individualise his page. This increases stickiness as the cutomers see that they can gain control of the content they access.

It is here that one will be able to see the synergy effect building in. Initially, the site can make the menu, to be delivered on the site, as contextual as possible to the visitor. Having attracted him, the site can let individualisation increase his loyalty. This insures eye stickness and repeated visits.

Of course, the solutions should be scalable. Well, if one has successfully tackled these underlying dynamics, chances of making the website a revenue centre increases. The trick of the trade is to intelligently anticipate and respond to the needs of the individual customer.