Ecommerce
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Online shoppers are already accustomed to the fact that their questions to a brand or retailer on the website and social networks are answered by ecommerce bots. Some of them can surprise with their ingenuity, others annoy with their narrowness. But with the right settings, a “chatty robot” can resolve various issues, saving time for more important tasks.
A chatbot is a program that can support a dialogue with a buyer or help in resolving some issue. Their capabilities allow you to recognize colloquial speech. And thanks to artificial intelligence, bots become “smarter” and can cope with more complex tasks.
More and more ecommerce business owners are investing in creating chatbots. For what? To interact with customers and guide them every step on their way to making a purchase (and in some cases post-purchase services).
However, not all chatbots are the same. Some online stores use chatbots that work based on pre-compiled answers to the questions asked. Some have simple conversations with customers, some have complex ones, and some bots scan the message for keywords to display relevant information to the user. And other, more advanced stores use chatbots built on artificial intelligence technology. Such systems are prone to learning – they analyze correspondence with customers and generate responses that will help solve the problem.
But regardless of the type, any properly created ecommerce bot helps to solve some kind of user task – for example, helps potential customers quickly find the necessary goods or services. After all, today users expect from companies, first of all, a quick response to their requests
There is one point to take into account: you don’t have to create a chatbot for the sake of the chatbot itself. Bots must perform a specific task and be useful to buyers. At the same time, for greater efficiency, they are required to imitate communication with a living person as much as possible and send the information that a real consultant/operator would provide. Here is an example of solving two different problems:
The resources — time and money — to build each of these two bots will be very different. Therefore, before spending a lot on chatbot development services, ask yourself what problem you want to solve. A simple chatbot might work just fine for you.
Technology is evolving and the service is gradually improving. And with them, the expectations of users are growing and constantly changing, so it is important to meet the standards that customers get used to. To do this, you need to be always in touch with your users, collect feedback from them and provide them with an opportunity to contact you at any time if necessary. And creating a chatbot, you can resolve all these issues.
Below, we have put together 5 benefits of making chatbots useful for ecommerce.
A big problem of all online stores is abandoned carts. Potential customers add products to their shopping cart and then leave the site without making a single purchase.
You might be surprised how big a problem is. You may always check out when you put items in your shopping cart, but if so, you are one of the few who do so. According to Statista, the average cart abandonment rate in 2020 was 88%!
If customers do not make a purchase, then you need to encourage them. Now, this is mainly solved by remarketing through email newsletters – a reminder is sent to the client about incomplete purchases. But doing the same with the help of a chatbot in customer service, that will send a message directly to the client’s messenger, is much more efficient. For example, we know that WhatsApp’s open rate is more than 90% higher than email.
A fairly large part of the clients who contact our ecommerce website design company is afraid to implement chatbots – they believe that a bot will annoy their potential clients. Indeed, we are all often enraged by unnecessary pop-ups and chat windows popping up on every page, which strive to “help” us with something. But we are still talking about properly configured and useful bots 😉.
In fact, many buyers appreciate the virtual assistant. Because it relieves them of the difficulties that arise when finding the necessary goods. According to a survey conducted by Forbes, 83% of users need assistance with online shopping. And 75% of them expect to receive it within 5 minutes of placing an order.
Even if your site has the perfect structure and navigation, a chatbot for customer service can direct users to the exact section or product they are looking for. It will also be effective when your employees are not always able to promptly provide customer support. Especially now, when the consultants are often responsible for sales themselves, administer the website, maintain the company’s social networks, and in their spare time also deliver goods, replacing the courier.
Chatbots in online stores can also suggest that loyal customers buy goods based on their previous orders and/or browsing history. There is the same analogy with e-mail, when the client automatically receives a letter, for example, to buy more diapers, since the previous ones are running out soon. But why send a message to a spammed communication channel if a chatbot can send it directly to a messenger using a bot 😉?
We mentioned above that the bot can be used to remind you of an unfinished purchase. But chatbots can still be used to notify customers about current or upcoming discounts and promotions in your online store.
And, returning to the previous tip, customer data and segmentation play a significant role here. Because this way you will only be able to send promotions to customers who have previously been interested in these products or ordered them. In general, like email marketing, only many times more effective.
And, of course, one of the most useful features of chatbots is attracting new customers. Given the huge popularity of instant messengers such as WhatsApp, customers today are looking for the most convenient and fastest way to contact the company. Especially for the generation that grew up with mobile phones in their hands. And chatbots do just that.
If you can be contacted directly in the messenger, for example, in the subway on the way to work and resolve your issue – you must admit, it is much more convenient than calling somewhere, writing an email or contacting the eternally empty chats on the site. Why not make it your competitive advantage?
Chatbots in ecommerce are a very effective way to collect user data. The more your visitors interact with chatbots, the more data you get. This can be helpful in better understanding the needs of your customers.
Such data can be used for:
It works very simply – each client who accesses the chatbot is assigned a unique number. You can also assign different tags to customers for subsequent segmentation. Working in conjunction with CRM, all this helps to better understand how people use your site – how long they search, what they don’t like, what they look at, and so on.
When you understand what your users want, you can move them through the funnel to a sale faster.
Usually, large and medium-sized businesses request designing a chatbot from a qualified IT service provider. The cost of a high-quality solution, developed with the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies from experienced chatbot developers can be rather high. It is also worth understanding that all stages of solution creation and launch can take a lot of time.
Below, we’ve collected 3 successful chatbot examples from world-famous companies.
French company Bot Burger requested a particular chatbot development service: they launched a unique project specializing in food delivery (mostly burgers). They became the first bot company without a website or mobile app. The only platform where they are represented is Facebook: on their account page, you can place an order via Messenger. Bot Burger attracts new customers with a Facebook ad offering a 20-minute burger delivery. Thanks to this business model, the cost of customer acquisition is very low, which is extremely important for such a business.
American media company Complex Networks uses a Facebook chatbot to boost traffic. The bot in a chat with the users collects data about them (name, gender, location, etc.), then, based on this information, forms and displays personalized content. Thanks to this approach, the company was able to seriously reduce the budget for advertising.
A Danish educational toy company has launched a Facebook chatbot, Ralph, to help you find the right product. The bot asks a series of questions (the age of the person to whom the set is being purchased, location, budget, product topic, etc.) and issues recommendations based on the answers received. Once the users have selected the item they like, Ralph sends a link to the shopping cart on the LEGO website, which already has the selected item added. As a result, using this technique, the company was able to receive six times the coverage of advertising costs in some regions, as well as reduce the cost of conversion by 31%.
Chatbots in online stores can interact with customers in different ways: through chat pop-ups on the website, in instant messengers, or in general, they can be implemented as personalized survey bots. Each of these approaches, if implemented correctly, will help ecommerce business owners to attract new customers and increase conversions.
If you are just thinking about introducing a chatbot to your online store, you can ask our ecommerce development company for help. Just fill in the form on our website – and our specialists will provide you with the solution designed exactly for your project’s needs.
US-based and operating globally, NEKLO spearheads digital transformation initiatives for businesses worldwide. We deliver software solutions complying with your market and legislation.
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