How eCommerce Live Chat Can Boost Online Conversions

You might have the best-looking website out there in your niche, but that alone will not guarantee sales conversion. It’s like a work of art. It might be pretty to look at, but no one wants to buy it until they speak to someone and know the background.

Now, you may not be able to physically be in the room to answer questions for your customers when they are shopping online, but you can provide a live chat option that mimics that in-shop experience.

So if you want to see up to a 45% increased conversion rate as the business owners in this study did, stick around and see how you can make live chat work for your eCommerce site.

What is live chat and how is it used?

Live chat is a communication tool consumers can use to instantly connect with salespeople to ask questions and get help while they browse your eCommerce site. It takes the personal touch of a phone call with the text benefits of email to create an ideal at-home customer support solution.

According to the latest research, the biggest eCommerce consumers are aged 24-35, aka, Millennials. So it should come as no shock that this demographic is also changing the way we communicate with each other. Brought up on MSN messenger and notorious for hating talking to strangers over the phone, live chat provides the most comfortable communication solution – and people of other demographics agree!

It’s vital that eCommerce live chat is simple to use and allows customers to talk to real people. If people feel they are jumping through hoops or talking to robots, they’ll simply give up and abandon their cart.

Six ways live chat can boost your online conversions

1. Customers get their questions answered quickly

The joy of online shopping is that you scroll, choose your items, and then checkout as quickly as you want. And in this respect, your customers don’t have the time to sit through 20 minutes of annoying hold music or wait a business day (or more!) to get a reply to their emails. They want their questions answered immediately so they can finish their transactions and get on with their day.

Live chat fulfils this time need and allows your customers to get bespoke answers to quick questions, which will make them more likely to proceed with their purchase instead of abandoning their basket.

2. Provide support for your customers before they know they need it

A live chat agent is essentially an online shopping assistant. When you’re in a store and a sales assistant sees you looking lost or struggling, they’ll likely come over and ask if you need any help.

You can calibrate your live chat to do the same.

Think about the pages where your customers get most confused or have the most questions. This might be at checkout or on your latest product/service release. Setting up your live chat to pop open and ask if they need help will make your customers trust you and more likely to engage, leading to a higher chance of a sale.

3. Pre-screen surveys allow your live chat agents to give the best advice

Sometimes your customers have questions that can’t be answered on your FAQ page; sometimes, they need to talk to a real person. The best way to help your customer is to set up a pre-screen survey that takes their name and email address and lets them choose from a selection of potential problems.

Most live chat operating systems have the AI capability to recommend potential FAQ answers, leaving your live chat agents free to chat with those who need it.

Always give your clients the chance to talk to a real person as part of the FAQ choices. Sometimes you have an FAQ page on their query, but it doesn’t answer their exact problem, and if you send customers on an FAQ loop, they will definitely click off your page.

4. Show your customers you value them and their time

When you go to the shops, you will see a team of people, not robots (we hope!), working to keep the store running and help customers out. So, of course, you don’t want to deal with a robot when you shop online.

Make sure your live chat agents speak to your customers like humans and match their tone (i.e. if the customer uses great! ☺ awesome, ty, then respond similarly).

This will show your clients you care about their experience and, therefore, their time, and will encourage them to finalise their purchase.

After all, people won’t remember a robot conversation (unless it angers them), but they’ll definitely remember the lovely customer service live chat experience they had and will want to continue doing business with you.

5. Make it easy to explain how complicated products and services work

We’ve focused a lot on Q&A scenarios and giving your customers an in-shop experience from the comfort of their homes. But the capabilities of live chat stretch as far as the imagination can go.

If you have a complicated product or service that can’t really be explained in words, how about having your live chat agents give a quick live product demonstration?

This way, your clients are still getting the instant information they are looking for, but you are going the extra step to give them confidence in not only their prospective purchase but also the brand itself. And as we explained in point #4, a positive customer experience is powerful enough to convert customers into return clients.

(Live) chat your way to conversions today!

You know your business has the potential to appeal to a wider audience and that your products and services are well worth buying. So why not secure those conversions by seeing how eCommerce live chat can change your customer’s journey on your site.

At Storey, we provide virtual retail solutions for businesses to help them maximise their online selling potential.

So if you’re ready to see your sales numbers jump up, check us out and see how we can help your eCommerce site thrive.