Benefits Of Live Chat For eCommerce

Looking for another way to communicate with your customers without adding a phone number to your site? While phone and email inquiries are still the norms for customer service, they may not be preferred. There are some anecdotal indications that customers would rather chat.

If you don’t have live chat installed on your site yet, consider the benefits of using a live chat facility. The following are some of the main benefits of using live chat for eCommerce.

Live Chat Increases Conversion

Live chat is not just a way of interacting with your customers; it’s a broad concept that involves untapped potential that enables you to create a good rapport with your customers as well as boosting your conversion rates.

Did you know that average ecommerce conversion rates are 1% – 3%? It means that for every 100 online store visitors, approximately two of them will convert into a sale.

If we imagine 100 people crowding into a brick and mortar store and we realise only two people will buy something, this news could be depressing. Luckily, the online world is driven by different laws and ecommerce stores are visited daily by thousands of customers each month.

If we consider that the average conversion rate is around 2% then it doesn’t sound that bad, right? But no matter how high or low your conversion rate is, you should always make every effort to ensure you have optimised your site to have it as high as possible.

Customers Love It

Aside from the convenience of instant messaging, visitors are familiar with text messaging and are comfortable using it. Online chat enables visitors to access immediate answers to their questions which often leads them to make a purchase decision while they are on the product page.

Remember, once a person leaves your website they typically forget you or go elsewhere. So the goal is to keep them ON your site as long as possible.

Automated chat greetings

Automated chat greetings are one of the most important live chat features. It works exactly the way a shop assistant greets customers: once a visitor enters your online store the chat greeting starts and offers help.

If you analyse your website and know your customers’ pain points, you can set up timed chat greetings to start at the exact moment when your customer needs it.

For example, if you’ve noticed that your customer spends a lot of time in a shopping cart, you can be quite sure they have a problem. Offering them help at the cart can increase the chance that they will complete the purchase.

Respond to Questions Quickly

Impress online shoppers by quickly answer questions, while they are browsing your store. If they happen to have a question about a product. It’s very convenient for them to click the chat box to talk to someone. Which can lead to an increase in sales!

90% of consumers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. (Source)

Using a live chat feature on your website can help you take care of your customers quickly and help them check out faster. Instead of them abandoning their cart for another site they’ll be more likely to complete their transaction with you.

Now you might be thinking, “I can’t be online all the time.”

Don’t worry you don’t have to be! Just be present during your high traffic times. Study your analytics, if you find that on Tuesdays you tend to have a high amount of traffic from 1 pm – 3 pm. Make sure you are available to chat and help support customers during those times.

After-hours Contact Forms

Whenever you are offline, you can still gather customer inquiries. Each time you log off, the chat window on your website is replaced with a form requesting them to enter their name, email and a message.

Once your customer exits the form, the message will be sent to you as an email message, or if you are using the Facebook Messenger live chat you’ll see a message on Messenger. Thanks to this, you won’t miss any leads while offline.

Gain helpful insights

There is nothing like getting real answers from people. Yes, you could do surveys or polls but people tend to respond with expected answers. Catching them in the moment will get you a more authentic point of view of their experience and any issues they might be having on your site.

It also gives you an opportunity to connect and gather useful information from your web visitor just from talking to them. Having a live chat option on your site can help you uncover opportunities that can help you improve your website, products, offers, etc. Maybe you’ll find out that your customers are desiring something different, or that a lot of people seem to have the same questions.

Create a personalised experience

We touched on this a bit earlier but having a live chat option on your site creates a personalised experience. Helping your customers understand that there are real people behind the business that cares about them.

So consider adding a live chat to your shop to help improve your customer experience and humanise your brand. You’ll be able to convert more sales and turn customers into a loyal audience a lot faster.

Conclusion

Live chat for business is the fastest channel for online communication, In your marketing strategy remember that benefits of live chat is not just a simple tool, but it can be used as a powerful e-commerce solution to achieve excellent customer service. Live chat help will bring more visitors, provide amazing customer service, and of course increase conversions.