The latest consumer sentiment reports are in. Consumers are firmly used to shopping online and have shifted their preferences this way.

Even with lingering economic uncertainties and concerns, spending is strong, and optimism levels are rising.

McKinsey found that customers taking advantage of omnichannel shopping are much more interactive and socially engaged with brands.

It’s great news overall, particularly for electronics eCommerce retailers who would otherwise face several challenges with online selling.

To begin with, these behavioural shifts present the opportunity to personally engage with online shoppers. Consumers are used to video chatting with family, friends, and colleagues and are now open to doing the same with brands.

Your customers can now experience the product before buying, instantly have concerns alleviated, and make genuine connections with brand representatives.

The Video Chat Product Experience

One of the drawbacks of eCommerce is the inability to know exactly what you’re getting. Consumers unfamiliar with a product don’t always get what they need from the pictures and images provided.

When customers aren’t sure what the product is like, they’re likely to leave the site to go looking for retailers with better pictures and descriptions.

A live video chat grabs these customers, keeps them on the site, and turns their curiosity into a selling advantage.

You can let them explore in real-time, answer questions, and understand exactly what’s on the customer’s mind.

It’s difficult to anticipate what each customer wants to know or see from your products. With live video chat, the most interested and serious ones can fully experience the product with you and have all their product questions answered.

Provide Detailed Product Explanations

If you’re selling electronics that need a bit of consumer education, eCommerce live chat is the best way to deliver this.

Brand representatives can also explain the difference between similar brands, product lines, models, or product updates.

Providing product fact sheets and FAQs is essential. But this does nothing to pull consumers further into your brand experience.

Facts, data, and information are generic marketing collateral that can be found anywhere. If you’re relying on this, your eCommerce store is interchangeable with everyone else.

Video chat moves you from being another static option to being an active consumer guide. This builds your expertise and gives brand reps the opportunity to coach consumers to a sale.

Build Consumer Confidence

Many sales are missed because consumers lack confidence about their purchase for one reason or another.

With eCommerce, customers tend to worry about making the wrong choice and having to make a return.

A retail live chat is perfect for building customer confidence in either the product or your great post-sale customer service.

Brand reps might need to share information on how other people use a product or let customers know if it’s appropriate for their intended use.

If you have a generous return policy, customers will be more reassured when having this confirmed by a live person than having to trust a written statement alone.

Give Personal Demonstrations On-Demand

Ever think about what Costco, Whole Foods, and Bed Bath & Beyond have in common? They each have their own unique business model. But these super-successful retailers all used product demonstrations to help build the business.

This is a major advantage they had over eCommerce. But Covid-19 took that away from them and shifted it towards online retailers.

Live video chat gives you the opportunity to provide shoppers with a live product demo. It’s your chance to have a one-on-one, interactive conversation with your customer.

The value and power of this can’t be overstated. Without personal interactions with the customer, retailers usually have to shell out big budgets for market researchers, secret shoppers, and consumer insight reports.

Make Meaningful Connections

How often do you have face-to-face conversations with your customers? It’s the best way to form a genuine connection and intensify the buying relationship.

If this isn’t high on your list, it should be. It may not seem necessary to build a connection in order to sell electronics, but consumers today are value and meaning-driven. They prioritise brands that share their moral code, sense of ethics, and general way of looking at the world.

Use live video chats to give online shoppers a sense of who you are as a company, what your brand represents, and what you stand for. It’s a great way for them to experience your brand.

Garner Consumer Insights

Live video chat gives you the chance to understand your customer far more precisely than you can with data and metrics alone.

70 to 93% of all communication is said to be nonverbal. And much of this rests in our facial expressions and speech.

The ability to see a customer’s expression while they talk about your products and their needs is priceless. You can intuit far more about them than any survey could tell you.

The Video-Enhanced Future of eCommerce

Live video-enhanced eCommerce is already widespread in China where it’s an integral part of the shopping experience. It powers eCommerce giants like Alibaba’s offshoot Taobao, with retailers routinely raking in billions in sales.

Live video-assisted shopping is only beginning to emerge in the West. Pre-pandemic, it was adopted by only a few vanguard eCommerce companies like Amazon and Sephora.

The way we live and interact with each other has changed. And due to this, consumers are now more amenable to live video chats with eCommerce brands.

But most online retailers still don’t offer this. This is a rare opportunity for brands to adopt this technology first, differentiate, and take the edge. Moments like this don’t come around often.

Get in touch to discover how you can use live video chat to enhance your online selling.