TOPICS: Chatbot for Ecommerce   Chatbot for Website    Chatbot Ideas   

Chatbots For Ecommerce – What Is an Ecommerce Chatbot And How Can It Help Your Business?

Why should you consider chatbots for ecommerce? As an ecommerce business owner, tips and tricks to help you succeed in the online marketplace are probably a daily feature in your inbox, newsfeeds and social media channels. The latest tool that everyone’s been talking about is the efficient, intelligent, and customer-friendly ecommerce chatbot. The success of ecommerce chatbots over the past couple of years has been phenomenal to say the least. They’ve progressed from being a novel idea to enjoying a prominent place on all major online shopping websites. But what are these online ecommerce chatbots, exactly, and how can you benefit from building one for your business?

Ecommerce Chatbots: The instant messaging solution every online business need

We’re in an age where instant messaging has become the default mode of communication. Modern consumers have made their preferences clear – cumbersome phone calls and lengthy email chains are out, and quick, on-demand chat conversations are in. This applies to social interactions, as well as to online shopping, banking, travel planning, and practically every service that people use via the internet.

Enter chatbots. Simply put, a chatbot is a program that simulates a one-on-one conversation with a real person via instant messaging. It could either be reading answers off a preset script, or be driven by artificial intelligence. The latter is a more effective and popular kind of chatbot, especially in the ecommerce space. Ecommerce chatbots start out with a basic set of commands and then use machine learning as they go about interacting with people. This allows them to identify nuances and variations in language and tone, and get smarter with every conversation that they have.

Ecommerce businesses that create a chatbot for their websites rely on this AI-powered technology to offer better shopping assistance and customer service. With customers getting more mobile-oriented and browsing sessions getting shorter, online stores have to think on their feet in order to get the attention of every potential customer. They have to be helpful, quick and intelligent with their responses, and preferably in a way that millennial shoppers are already familiar with.

Building ecommerce chatbots is by far the most effective and affordable way to meet these objectives. To understand this better, consider the following advantages that AI chatbots bring to an online shopping website:

1. Answering a wide variety of questions:

People shopping on your website will almost always have doubts and questions that block them from completing their purchases. These questions could be about products, pricing, shipping, returns or refunds, and plenty more. If you create an ecommerce chatbot to answer these frequently asked questions, you’ll be able to automate the process of resolving your potential customers’ doubts, thus increasing their chances of buying something from your site.
Even if you don’t already have an online chatbot on your website, you likely have a bunch of FAQs listed in your help section. These are enough to get you started with a chat script. Then, once your ecommerce chatbot is live and in conversation with your website’s visitors, it’ll use machine learning and natural language processing to get better at identifying issues and responding to them in effective ways.

2. Preventing shopping cart abandonment:

No ecommerce business can ignore the challenge of shopping cart abandonment. Running an online store in today’s competitive ecommerce market automatically puts you in the midst of intense competition. It’s only natural for some of your potential customers to abandon your site midway through their purchase and go someplace else in search of lower prices or more detailed information. Ecommerce chatbot development doesn’t promise a permanent solution to this problem, but it sure can convince a good percentage of shoppers to complete their purchase from your site.

A lot of the time, shoppers just need a little handholding to get them through to checkout. They may be in two minds about a product simply because they can’t find detailed information about it, are unsure about how it measures up against similar products by other brands, or hope to find a better price somewhere else. Just as often, and especially in the case of new ecommerce businesses, people tend to be apprehensive about the online store’s credibility or returns policy, and end up opting for a more established website just to be safe.

Ecommerce chatbots can help you address all the above doubts and concerns. You can program the bot to give out detailed product information, offer side-by-side product comparisons, and pitch discounts if a shopper seems unsure after adding items to their cart. You can also feed your shipping and returns policies into the chat script, and make the chatbot display customer reviews and testimonials to make the shopper feel safe buying from your website.

3. Powering your business with data and analytics:

Knowing your customers is central to your success as an ecommerce business. Having an idea of what your customers are interested in, the issues that they encounter on your website, and even the features that they like about it, will help you tailor your offerings to meet their needs and assist them better.

Ecommerce businesses that create a chatbot for their websites immediately acquire a steady stream of data about customer behavior, complaints and feedback. The transcripts of your ecommerce chatbot’s conversations with your customers are a fantastic source of first-hand information that you won’t find through other means. Plus, if you opt for AI chatbot development, the bot itself will have the ability to learn and adapt with every successive conversation, and offer help and support tailored to the specific needs of every customer.

Gear your ecommerce business for success with the help of ecommerce chatbots. To learn more about building chatbots for your online store, read our other blog posts or reach us with your questions about ecommerce chatbot development.