Integrating AI into your eCommerce platform with PubNub Functions
Picture this: A customer lands on your eCommerce site and types "I need something warm and waterproof for hiking in Scotland this November." Instead of getting generic results or having to dig through endless filters, they get exactly what they're looking for in seconds.
That's not magic—that's AI working behind the scenes to understand what people actually want.
The eCommerce world has completely transformed over the past few years. What used to be experimental AI tools have become essential business infrastructure. We're talking about a market that's exploding from $8.65 billion in 2025 to over $45 billion by 2032. And for good reason—businesses using AI are seeing 25% improvements in customer satisfaction, revenue, and cost reduction.
Just think about three game-changers, and let's look at each in turn:
- Chatbots that actually understand what customers are asking
- Smart recommendations that feel like mind-reading
- Automated content creation that scales without losing quality
Where PubNub fits into your AI strategy
Here's the thing about AI in eCommerce: it's not just about having smart algorithms. It's about delivering those insights instantly, in real-time, when your customers need them most.
That's where PubNub comes in. As a real-time communication platform, we handle the lightning-fast delivery of AI-powered experiences. Whether it's streaming personalized product recommendations, powering conversational commerce, or delivering instant customer support responses, PubNub ensures your AI works at the speed your customers expect.
What are PubNub Functions (and why should you care)?
Think of PubNub Functions as your AI's best friend. They're serverless compute capabilities that live right inside the PubNub network, letting you build intelligent, real-time flows without worrying about infrastructure.
Here's what makes them powerful: Functions can process messages and events before or after delivery, work on intervals, respond to webhooks, and integrate with all kinds of PubNub events. Plus, they come with built-in modules that extend their capabilities even further.
The real magic? They excel at ultra-low latency flows, which means your AI can respond to customer queries in milliseconds, not seconds.
The Functions catalog: Your AI toolkit, ready to go
The Functions catalog is like having a team of AI experts who've already solved the hard problems for you. It's a collection of pre-built functions that you can use right away to add AI capabilities to your applications.
Instead of building everything from scratch, you can offload the complex stuff to PubNub while focusing on what makes your business unique. We handle the infrastructure headaches so you don't have to.
We just added three powerful AI templates that are perfect for eCommerce:
Claude (Anthropic): Your customer service superstar
What it's great at: Claude excels at understanding complex customer queries and providing clear, helpful responses. It's particularly good at summarizing information, extracting key details, and maintaining a professional tone that customers trust.
Perfect for: Order tracking, FAQ responses, policy explanations, and any customer-facing chat where you need reliable, well-structured answers.
The trade-off: While Claude doesn't have live web access and can be pricier at scale, its safety and reliability make it ideal for direct customer interactions.
Gemini (Google): Your global commerce companion
What it's great at: Gemini shines when you're dealing with multiple languages, visual content, or complex product data. It can analyze images alongside text, making it perfect for visual commerce experiences.
Perfect for: International stores, product discovery, visual search, and any scenario where you're mixing images with text or serving customers in multiple languages.
The trade-off: It requires more computational power and the ecosystem is still maturing, but the multimodal capabilities are worth it for global brands.
Perplexity: Your real-time research assistant
What it's great at: Perplexity is always connected to the web, making it incredibly fast at research, trend analysis, and competitive intelligence. It's like having a research team that never sleeps.
Perfect for: Internal dashboards, market research, trend monitoring, and competitive analysis. Think back-office intelligence rather than customer-facing chat.
The trade-off: While it's not optimized for polished customer communications, its real-time web access makes it invaluable for business intelligence.
The problem every eCommerce store faces
Your customers know what they want, but they don't always know how to find it. They're typing things like:
- "I'm looking for a lightweight laptop, maybe Dell or HP, but with enough power for video editing and some gaming."
- "Best running shoes for beginner to run first half-marathon"
- "Standup Paddle board to handle 200kg"
These aren't simple keyword searches. They're complex queries that require understanding context, intent, and nuance. Traditional search falls short, leaving customers frustrated and you losing sales.
Here's where AI changes everything. Instead of forcing customers to navigate through endless filters and categories, you can understand exactly what they're looking for and deliver instant, relevant results.
Building your AI-powered product query system
Let me show you how to build this capability using PubNub Functions and Perplexity in just a few steps (it's simpler than you think):
Step 1: Capture what customers are really asking
When customers type their queries into your app, PubNub's SDKs capture those messages instantly. No complex setup required—just use any of our customer-facing SDKs.
Step 2: Set up your intelligent listener
Create a PubNub Function that subscribes to the channel carrying customer queries. Think of this as your AI's ears, always listening for new questions to process.
Step 3: Add the AI magic
This is where the Functions Catalog shines.
- Grab the Perplexity template from the Functions Catalog
- Your Function automatically sends customer queries to Perplexity for analysis and structured extraction
- No need to build AI integration from scratch—it's all ready to go
Step 4: Connect to your product engine
The processed, structured query gets forwarded to your existing product search engine or recommendation system. The AI has already done the heavy lifting of understanding intent.
Step 5: Deliver instant results
Your product engine responds with relevant matches, and the Function sends these back through PubNub in real-time. Customers get answers in milliseconds, not minutes.
Step 6: Make it uniquely yours
Fine-tune the AI instructions to match your business:
- Prioritize products actually in stock
- Highlight specific brands or SKUs you want to promote
- Match your brand's tone of voice and style
- Focus on your target customer segments
Why this matters for your business (beyond just being cool tech)
This isn't just about having the latest AI features. It's about solving real business problems:
Customers get what they actually want Instead of wrestling with filters and categories, customers describe what they need in plain English and get relevant results instantly. No more abandoned searches or frustrated shoppers.
You capture intent that would otherwise be lost Every complex query contains valuable customer intent data. When someone asks for "a warm, waterproof jacket for hiking in Scotland," you're learning about their interests, needs, and context—data that makes future recommendations even better.
The experience feels effortless Natural language search feels intuitive and engaging. Customers spend less time searching and more time buying, leading to higher conversion rates and better satisfaction scores.
You focus on your business, not infrastructure PubNub handles all the complex real-time messaging and AI integration. You get enterprise-grade performance without the enterprise-grade headaches of building and maintaining these systems yourself.
It creates a competitive advantage While your competitors are still relying on basic keyword search, you're delivering personalized, intelligent experiences that keep customers coming back.
Ready to transform your eCommerce experience?
Intelligent product query processing is just the beginning. The AI revolution in eCommerce spans everything from real-time personalization and dynamic pricing to automated customer support and predictive inventory management. With PubNub Functions and our growing catalog of AI integrations, you can explore countless ways to make your platform smarter, faster, and more engaging.
The best part? You don't need to be an AI expert to get started. Pick a use case that matters most to your customers, grab the right template from our Functions Catalog, and start delivering intelligent experiences today. Your customers—and your bottom line—will thank you for it.
