Live chat is non-negotiable for eCommerce sites. You may opt for fancier or more basic tools to do it, you may opt to only make it available certain hours or to fully staff it 24/7, you may opt to be proactive in inviting site visitors to chat or you might just sit back and let visitors click to chat – but you aren’t going to go without eCommerce live chat.
That’s because shopping cart abandonment is a killer, and repeat business is essential to growth.
RJ Metrics reported:
1) Growing 2.5x faster than peers in the first 6 months led to growing nearly 5x larger over 3 years
2) Leading eCommerce businesses generated most of their revenue at the $50MM level from returning customers, not from new customers
How eCommerce Live Chat Can Help
The major causes of shopping cart abandonment include:
- Unexpected shipping charges
- Mandatory account creation
- Payment methods- either the visitor’s preferred one is not available, or the visitor is not convinced of the security of the form used to process their payment
- Other questions that product pages and/or your site in general don’t answer on their own
- The customer is still just browsing and had no actual intention of buying
Unless you’re prepared to eat the cost of shipping or trade business now for the ability to market for repeat business later, you need a salesman. Your live chat agents can engage site visitors about whatever the hold-up may be in the checkout process (any live chat product designed for eCommerce should be able to indicate when a visitor’s been stuck on a page for a while or bouncing between the same few pages). Agents can also offer discounts and make exceptions from the listed prices and policies, facilitating the checkout process and creating a positive, memorable online shopping experience.
Why Use Live Chat Rather Than Pop-Ups or Email?
As we’ve discussed on the blog before, the addition of live chat to a website typically causes a 20% increase in conversions.
For young people specifically, 60% prefer to have shopping questions answered via live chat than “traditional” mediums. This is likely due to the convenience, speed and human interaction it offers.
Live chat also provides better opportunities for optimization than pop-up forms or email. By comparing the results of individual agents and using segmentation/groups functionality for your visitors, you can develop a clear picture of who is visiting your site and how to best engage them to secure the sale, then scale this knowledge across your live chat team.
