Do you think that creating an excellent website and displaying amazing pictures is enough to convert the visitors and boost your online sales?
There are approximately 12 million to 24 million online stores worldwide. To survive in the highly competitive market, businesses must equip themselves with the latest technology and integrate their websites and apps with unique features to provide an unforgettable user experience.
As much as online shopping has eased people’s lives and provides convenience to them, it is not free of a few drawbacks. The customers cannot touch or hold the product. They have to purchase the product by relying on the images uploaded by the seller. In addition, a customer is all alone on the website. There is no one to guide the customer and sort out his queries.
But…thanks to advancement in technology!
Live chat for eCommerce websites has made it possible for businesses to accommodate their customers throughout their buying journey. By simply providing the live chat option on the website, your customer can connect with you quickly without having to write an email or dial any number.
The majority of the eCommerce stores have integrated the live chat option on their websites to greet, respond, and help their customers. If you, too, want to increase your conversions and boost online sales, you must leverage the live chat feature on your website.
In today’s article, we present you with ten powerful live chat experiments, which will help your business increase its eCommerce sales.
Let’s dive in…
10 Powerful Live Chat Experiments To Increase Your Ecommerce Sales
1. Welcome The Visitors
The first live chat experiment for increasing your eCommerce sales is to welcome your visitors and notify them that your website offers a live chat feature to cater to their concerns and queries. Many businesses overlook sending a welcome message to the visitors. They expect the visitors to initiate the conversation if they have any problem or questions about the products or delivery.
Businesses must adopt a proactive strategy and initiate the conversation with the users. We are asking you to begin first because the users do not come to your website to chat. They visit the website to explore the products or purchase them. As a customer service
representative, it is your job to inform them that you are available to help them and sort out their problems.
Do not wait for the customer to encounter a problem to turn to you. Become smart with technology and inform your customers that you are available and ready to help them at any time.
Another benefit of sending a welcome message to your visitors is, it becomes easier for web users to find the chatbox when they need help. Sometimes, it becomes difficult for the users to locate the chatbox on the website if the business doesn’t send a welcome message.
2. Use Portraits To Increase Engagement
Bots are an excellent way to talk with customers and respond to their queries at any time of the day or night. However, people feel more comfortable when they speak to a human instead of a chatbot.
Live chat provides an excellent opportunity for the company to connect with the customers and humanize the brand. Try to have a sales representative communicate with the users and respond to their queries. Always use a high-quality headshot next to the chatbox or bubble. People feel more comfortable talking online when they see a picture of the person they are talking to.
Don’t worry; you don’t have to display a headshot of all the live agents that talk to the customer. Any high-quality picture of a human will do the job, even if your live chat agents are bots.
3. Use Pre-Written Responses To Increase Answer Speed
Online users prefer live chat over emails or phone calls because of the ease and convenience it provides to them. When users connect with a business via chat box, they expect immediate responses from the sales rep.
If the sales rep doesn’t reply to them immediately, the essence of live chat is lost. The users might even exit the website if they are not answered promptly. Therefore, use pre-written responses to reply to the frequently asked questions such as delivery timings, checkout process, payment methods, etc.
Save the snippets of the common questions to save time and respond immediately to the prospects. Moreover, the snippets will ensure that every sales rep is providing the same answer for frequently asked questions and there is no ambiguity in their responses.
4. Make chatbox Available On Every Webpage
Are you confused about which pages to place your live chat option on? Well, the answer is pretty simple! Your live chat option should be available on all the pages of your website.
Many eCommerce websites mistake placing the chat box in the hidden corners or footer of the web pages. If you are also making this mistake, we would recommend changing the placement of the live chat feature on your website. Position it on the place where it can be easily seen and used by the visitors.
Do not place the chatbox on your homepage only. The live chat feature must be available on every page where the user engagement is high and where the visitors spend a considerable amount of time exploring.
If you have placed a live chat option on just one page, let’s say on the product page, it will become difficult for the customer to connect to a sales rep if he has encountered an issue on the checkout page. Hence, keep the option of live chat on every page; if not, then place it on the important pages where the engagement is high.
5. Integrate Live Chat With Email Marketing
The importance of marketing cannot be denied in the fast-paced world. A brand that fails to market its products and services in the market collapses and shuts down in no time. Every marketing channel is vital to attract the audience and persuade them to purchase from your website.
The live chat feature provides an excellent opportunity for the business to integrate email marketing as part of its marketing strategy. Previously we advised you to take the email address of the users if you are offline so that you can notify them via email when their questions have been answered or if a sales rep is present on the website to talk to them.
You can use those email addresses and add them to your mailing list to send the latest updates and announcements of products, sales, deals and bundles, etc.
6. Make Chat Feature Available Around The Clock
An online business can receive queries and concerns from the users when it isn’t available and has closed its office. The customers residing in foreign countries might contact the business during their working hours, and just like other customers, they too would want a prompt response from the company.
To keep your customers pleased and look into their problems, a business must be available around the clock and offer 24/7/365 service to its customers. However, if nobody is present to respond to the customer on live chat, we would advise you not to display the chatbox. If a customer sends a query and receives the ‘Sorry, we aren’t online right now,’ it irritates him.
Instead of not responding to the customer or telling him that you are offline, it is better to collect their email address or contact number and inform him that a sales rep will get back to him shortly.
When a business informs the person that he will be notified when the sales rep responds to his query, he stays relaxed and trusts the business to look into his problem and get back to him.
7. Provide Typing Indicators
The latest messaging and chatting applications have made online users habitual of instant response after sending a message. People want to know if the recipient is online, offline, reading the message, or typing a reply.
When it comes to chatting on a website with a sales rep, customers expect the same response from the website’s chatbox. Hence, the business should provide the online status and typing indicators to its visitors.
Many live chats for eCommerce website plugins offer typing indicators to the users when a sales rep is online and typing a response. Ensure to download the plugin that can provide indicators, and don’t forget to turn it on before starting the conversation with the visitors.
8. Save The Conversation
Did you know that only 2% of the visitors convert on their first visit to a website? It means that many visitors will leave the website without purchasing anything on their first visit.
There is a good chance that people will revisit your website numerous times before converting as your customer. Hence, enable the feature of saving conversation in your live chat plugins. When the chats are saved, it becomes easier for both the visitor and the sales rep to follow up and have a record of the previous conversations.The visitor can keep track of the questions he has asked previously from the business, and the sales rep can understand the behaviour and pattern of the online user on the website.
9. Be Resourceful, Not Annoying
The features and tools that you integrate into your website must enhance the user experience instead of deteriorating; the live chat feature is no exception in this regard.
The interface of your chatbox should be helpful for the audiences and not irritating for them. If the visitor receives numerous texts each minute with a sound and shaking or jolting effects, it will irritate him and distract him from the content or products he sees on your website.
Do not go for the ‘Please notice me’ approach. Avoid using bright colours or creating a high contrast on your chatbox. It will not please your users, and they will avoid using the chatbox. Make your live chat interface according to the layout of your website. Use the same colours and fonts of the chatbox as your web pages.
Do not experiment with the colours and fonts of the chatbox. Make it appear as a part of your website.
10. Offers And Announcements
Another live chat experiment that you can conduct to boost eCommerce sales is to inform your visitors about the ongoing sales and deals on the website. Moreover, you can also leverage the live chat option to cross-sell and upsell the products and encourage newsletter sign-up.
i) Sales
If you are holding a sale on your eCommerce website, inform your visitors about it via live chat. Display a popup, and guide them to the products that are at discounted prices.
ii) Product Recommendation
Recommend your bestsellers to your visitors on special occasions like holidays or festivals to boost eCommerce sales.
For instance, if the customer is buying a Christmas décor from your website, you can suggest lights and lamps go with his purchases. Or if he has bought coats or scarves, you can recommend him to buy matching mittens or caps to complement the coat.
iii) Encourage Sign-Ups
To increase your subscribers’ list and promote your content and products via email, entice your visitors to sign up for the newsletter in return for a gift voucher or discount code that will be shared in the chatbox.
Wrapping Up
The arena of the online business is increasing with each passing day. Targeting the potential audience and converting them into customers has become an uphill task for entrepreneurs.
Using a live chat feature on your website can enable you to outshine your competitors and provide an excellent user experience at your eCommerce store.We hope that the experiments listed above help you to boost eCommerce sales and widen your customer base.Let us know which experiment you implemented on your website. We would be delighted to hear from you.
Author Bio:
Ricky Hayes is the Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Debutify – free Shopify theme, helping dropshippers build high-converting stores in minutes. He is a passionate entrepreneur running multiple businesses, marketing agencies, and mentoring programs.
