Dotdigital blog

How to create friction-free sales experiences with live chat (even at peak sales times!)

The dust has started to settle on Black Friday, but the Christmas ramp up has only just begun, and the January sales are around the corner.

You may be wondering what you can do to improve on your conversion rates from all those ‘just browsing’ visits you had. You might even be hitting your head against a wall because you know how much it costs to get these no-spenders to the site in the first place.

Make it easier for customers to get in touch

The truth is, there’s a really common mistake a lot of businesses make that lets customers slip out the funnel at the last minute! But don’t worry, we’re here to tell you what it is, and more importantly, how to avoid it.

Expert marketer that you are, we’re sure you’ve successfully navigated your customer down from the awareness stage, through consideration, and delivered them to your ecommerce store to make a decision. You might think: ‘well, what more can I do?’ It turns out, something really simple.

Your awareness- and consideration-stage content might well be wonderful. But can you guarantee it has answered every single question your prospect has? That it reassures every worry or complaint?

Customers are unique. So are their needs and use cases for your product or service. What will make a difference between you and your competitor at the decision stage? Or convince them to part with their hard-earned cash at all? Clearly displaying product information with absolute transparency helps. But you can’t list every single item that’s important to every single buyer. So what can you do?

You see, the biggest mistake businesses make at this stage is not making it easy enough for customers to reach out and ask an unanswered question.

Live chat opens doors

It’s that simple.

We’re not just talking about an info@ email address or a contact form that may as well go to nowhere. Today’s customers expect answers quickly, just like they would in a brick-and-mortar store. It’s expensive to take phone calls, and low on the customer’s contact preference list anyway. What you and every business needs is a way to manage inbound messages that are real-time and frictionless for your customers.

You’ve spent so much money on acquisition, especially during competitive times such as the Christmas shopping period, but improving ROI could be as simple as installing live chat onto your site with a few simple clicks.

Instead of losing customers at the last hurdle, Dotdigital’s Chat feature helps you:

  • remove barriers to sale
  • gives your agents opportunity to upsell
  • provides the kind of customer experience that keeps buyers coming back.

Don’t take our word for it! Forrester says that 44% of customers consider a conversation with a representative in real time the most important feature of an online shop’s website; 55% of customers will abandon the transaction if they can’t find an answer to a question; and live chat can result in a 40% increase in conversion rate and 10% increase in cart value. Winner!

Of course, Chat is just one way you can make your ecommerce store a pleasant place to be. Honorable mentions include tailored, relevant on-site product recommendations, friendly website navigation, and avoiding obnoxious ads or pop-ups at all costs! But with its track record of improving conversion rates and increasing average order value, Dotdigital’s live chat feature could be the difference between smashing those year-end targets out of the park or not quite reaching your true potential. We hope it’s the former 🙂

Get in touch to learn more about Dotdigital chat, and how it can work for you.

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