Good communication with customers is essential to the success of every business but, when it comes to ecommerce businesses, it takes on a whole new level. Since you cannot actually meet face to face with your customers, you need to make sure that you have good and reliable online communication channels in place, so that every single person interacting with your brand can have all of their questions answered in no time.
When your website visitors are browsing through your products and find themselves in need of your help, you need to be able to provide them real-time support. Otherwise, they may move on to your competition, so you may lose a lot of sales opportunities and, obviously, a lot of revenue.
What can help you not miss out on any opportunity to engage your website visitors in your brand and effectively boost your ecommerce business is a live chat feature on your website. Online chat software is one of the most powerful tools that you need to have in your business arsenal, so take a closer look at how exactly it can help your ecommerce company.
Building Relationships and Inspiring Loyalty
Building strong relationships with your customers is vital for your success, which is what live chat can help you accomplish. When you are available 24/7 to anyone who may need your help regarding your products, you will show that you care about satisfying their needs and, more importantly, you will gain their trust because one-on-one interactions lead to personalized service that consumers actually expect to receive.
Communicating with your customers and prospects via live chat on your ecommerce website will help you increase their loyalty. When they want to ask some questions about shipping fees, product features, return policies or anything else they need, you will be there to provide answers or make useful suggestions in an instant.
When they receive that kind of personalized service, not only will they come back to your online store again, but they will also gladly recommend you to their friends and family, which is the most powerful form of marketing.
Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
There are a number of reasons why people leave their shopping carts before making a purchase, but there are even more steps that you can take in order to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate. One of those steps is to integrate live chat on your website.
With live chat, you can prevent people from leaving in the middle of their shopping journey, because you can effectively address their pain points and meet their needs. This is because online chat software provides you with real-time visitor monitoring, so you can see exactly where your website visitors are at each point of their time on your site, enabling you to jump in at the exact time when they may need some help.
Even without the visitor monitoring feature and you sending proactive chat invitations, your customers will be less likely to abandon their shopping carts if they simply see that they can chat with you. When they can easily open the chat box and make an inquiry, you can be sure that they will not refrain from doing so, which will result in more sales.
Growing Leads and Increasing Conversion Rates
Every single ecommerce business constantly works on increasing their conversion rates, because the higher they are, the higher their ROI will be. While there are many ways for boosting conversions, such as optimizing your landing pages and product pages, speeding up your website and making it mobile-friendly, live chat is one of the best options for achieving that.
However, you need to really be available 24/7 if you are to capture all the leads and convert them into customers. Seeing the “offline” button may push them away, causing your conversion rates to drop. This is why you should have a chat bot that will engage in conversations with your website visitors outside of business hours, so you will never lose an important lead.
Increasing Average Order Value
Live chat enables you to use up-selling techniques and significantly increase your average order value. However, you need to do it right and not create an obligation, so as not to cause a backfire. You need to make useful suggestions and make your customers trust you so that you can upsell appropriately. For instance, you can promote something that is currently on sale or recommends the new version of a product someone is considering.
You can increase your average order value by using down-selling techniques as well. You can offer a discount on a particular minimum purchase or even a free shipping with a minimum order value. Such offers will encourage your customers to add one or more items to their shopping cart, which will lead to more profitable sales and a much higher ROI. Also, they will certainly come back again to do business with you.
Reducing Your Expenses
With live chat available on your website, you will have fewer phone calls to deal with, which will help you significantly reduce your expenses. Your customers will be able to ask any questions that they may have by simply clicking on the provided chat box, so they won’t have to place any phone calls to your call center.
Not only will this remove all the costs on both sides, but it will also make your customers more satisfied, as they will be able to easily contact you completely free of charge. Also, this will greatly reduce the load on your call center and make your staff more efficient and productive.
Summing up
These are the most important ways live chat can help you ecommerce business so, if you still haven’t gotten the chance to integrate it on your website, now’s the time to do it.
