Last Updated on February 1, 2023 by Guest
Technology has affected all the areas of our lives. It has influenced the way people communicate, run their businesses, take their classes, and even how they shop.
People prefer to shop from eCommerce stores as it saves their time and offers convenience. Just with a few clicks, people can place their orders and receive them at their doorsteps. With the advent of the Coronavirus, dependence on online stores increased by manifolds. People preferred to shop online instead of going to a physical store to buy their desired products.
Consumers have a lot of options for eCommerce stores to shop from. However, it has become challenging for online entrepreneurs to survive in the highly competitive market. The competition in the online world is fierce. For this reason, all the online stores try to provide excellent features on their website so that their buyers can get a fantastic shopping experience and do not go to their rivals’ stores.
One feature that works really well to convert visitors, increase online sales, and win customers’ trust is the live chat feature. By integrating the live chat app on the website, online sellers can instantly talk to their customers and immediately solve their queries.
Have a look at the following stats that show how a live chat app can boost eCommerce sales:
- Live chat has recorded the highest satisfaction level among all the customers’ service channels, i.e., 73%, whereas telephones and emails have reported 44% and 61%, respectively.
- 79% of buyers prefer the live chat feature as it provides them with instant support
- More than 77% of buyers reported not purchasing from a website that doesn’t offer a free live chat feature.
If your eCommerce website doesn’t have the free live chat feature, you lose the chance to help your prospective customers win their loyalty and increase your sales.
10 Powerful Live Chat Experiments To Increase Your Ecommerce Sales:
1. Personalize Your Online Sales Conversions
There are a lot of things that a customer misses out on when he is shopping online. For instance, he can neither hold the product nor ask questions about the product from a salesperson.
With a live chat feature, you can provide a human touch to your eCommerce stores. Personalizing the experience for your customers can result in increased sales.
When you interact with your customer via a live chat feature, you show them that you are actually eager to help them and answer their queries instead of pushing them to purchase the products from your website.
A live chat feature allows the sellers to review the past behavior and purchases of their customers. This insight lets the chat administrator suggest the customer products based on his previous purchases or the products that interested him.
2. Welcome Customers And Offer Help
If you want to benefit from a live chat strategy, you have to adopt a proactive strategy. Waiting for your visitors to approach via live chat is going to lose your sales.
A proactive strategy means approaching your customers first and informing them to guide them and answer their queries.
Do not wait for your customers to contact you only if they encounter any problems. Be smart with technology and welcome them to your store.
Welcoming the user to the store is the most common campaign of the live chat tool. Greet your users and inform them that you are available to address their questions and concerns. It will also make it easy for your customers to find the chatbox if he needs help. Failure to adopt the proactive strategy will make it difficult for your customer to locate the chatbox and contact you.
3. Customized Live Chat Interface
Another powerful live chat experiment is to brand your live chat’s user interface.
The customization of your live chat interface will directly influence how customers feel about your brand, customer care service, and the response generated by the live chat agents. Even your best chat strategy will fail miserably if the customers feel fishy about your chat box and find it difficult to connect with you through that chat app.
If your chatbox doesn’t look like a part of your website, customers will feel unsafe sharing their details or problems. However, if your live chat interface looks like a part of your website, customers will not hesitate to reach out to you.
The best live chat for the eCommerce business is the one that allows the brands to customize the chatbox’s interface according to the design and color of the website.
4. Integrate Your Live Chat With Facebook And Other Social Media
Social media has become an inseparable part of our lives. Famous networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., have a massive audience. It gives the businesses a perfect opportunity to market their brands and capture new customers.
Instead of replying to your follower’s query on Facebook or Instagram, try integrating your social profiles with live chat. It will help you respond to your prospective or current customers at all times, even when you are not active on the profile. The immediate response from your side will make them believe that your customer care service is excellent.
By integrating your live chat apps with social media profiles, you will increase your online sales, and you will get to reply to all the messages sent on your social media profiles.
5. Identify Pain Points
The live chat feature is not only for customers. Businesses can benefit from this feature too. By interacting with your customers and listening to their queries, you can understand their pain points and improve them.
For instance, if most customers ask the same question on live chat, you can create an FAQ and answer the common question asked by the customer. Or, if there is a problem on your website, let say that the product page is not working correctly, and people are complaining about it; you can get the problem fixed and improve the user experience for your buyers.
Improving your website or services will boost your eCommerce sales and attract more customers. Hence, keep track of the common questions and issues raised by the customers to identify their pain points.
6. Be Available Around The Clock
This has to be an essential thing to use live chats for increasing your sales. The majority of the companies only respond to live chat queries when they’re online or during their working hours. Businesses forget that when they’re working, their customers work too, and they do not get a chance to visit a website and explore it.
The purpose of the live chat is lost if you fail to respond to your customers immediately after receiving their concerns. Try to be available around the clock to respond to your customers.
If staying available throughout the day is impossible for you, keep track of the time and days when your website receives the most traffic or stay active during those peak hours.
7. Integrate A Mobile Chat Window
People prefer to access the internet and shop online with their smartphones. Web developers make sure that the website is responsive to mobile devices and functions smoothly.
If a website fails to display or load properly, the mobile visitors will exit the website, and the business will lose its chance to convert potential customers. Your live chat feature shouldn’t be an exception; it should also cater to the needs of mobile users.
Integrate a mobile chat window on your website to allow the visitors to interact with you without scrolling or adjusting the chatbox to their screens.
8. Provide Typing Indicators
Smartphones and the latest communication apps have conditioned people to get instant feedback when they send a message. People want to know what the other person is doing behind his screen after sending the message, are they online, offline, or typing a message.
Consumers expect the same when chatting with a business. Once they send out the message to the administrator, they want the indication that their message has been read and someone is looking after their problem. The best live chat for the eCommerce business offers this feature to indicate to the consumers that an agent is typing a response.
If your free live chat app has this option, make sure that it is turned on. Customers feel at ease when they see someone typing an answer to their question instead of staring at the blank screen.
9. Tread Lightly
There is a very subtle line between being creepy and being helpful. The live chat agents know a lot about the customers who ask questions or turn to them for finding the solution to their problems.
However, chat agents or administrators do not have to share their knowledge with the customers, or they’ll freak out. You have to help the customers with the problems they have discussed with you. Do not share the information or make them feel like you have been tracking their behavior on the website. Offer your help to them without making them feel uncomfortable.
10. Offers And Announcements
Use the free live chat apps to inform your customers about the sales, discount, bundle deals, etc. on your website:
a. Announce Sales
If you are holding a sale on your online store, inform your site visitors. Tell your customers what kind of sale you have; are you offering flat discounts, bundles, and deals, or selling a particular collection of items at reduced prices?
A sale announcement is the favorite announcement of the customers. Make sure you clearly announce to tempt the customers to shop from your website.
b. Recommend Products
If there is a special holiday or festival around the corner, leverage it and recommend your customers the items they might need. For instance, during the Christmas holidays, you can suggest a Christmas-themed lamp available on your website to your customers.
Similarly, if it’s a snowy season, you can suggest them your bestselling gloves and mittens. However, ensure that you do not sound aggressively intrusive by sending messages repeatedly. It will irritate your customer, and he will run away from your store.
c. Encourage Signups
You can welcome the customer and encourage him to subscribe to your newsletter by offering him a gift or a discount coupon.
Pulling The Plug
With presently millions of online businesses in the world and thousands of new businesses emerging daily, it has become challenging for entrepreneurs to survive in the market, attract potential customers, and increase their sales.
In this highly competitive market, ensure that your website is well equipped to provide the best user experience to your visitors and customers. Remember, customers are kings, if the kings are kept happy your business will reign in the market.
Live chat apps are an excellent way to connect with your customers, solve their queries, and understand their pain points.
Our Guest Contributor:
Ricky Hayes is the Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Debutify – free Shopify theme, helping drop shippers build high-converting stores in minutes. He is a passionate entrepreneur running multiple businesses, marketing agencies, and mentoring programs.