Chatbots – The Next Big Thing for E-commerce

In today’s world, a huge population is showing their high interest in buying their daily essentials online from eCommerce websites, and there are so many reasons behind this major shift. According to Statista, over 2.14 billion people in the world will buy goods and services online in the coming year of 2021. This report by Statista directly points towards that people find such eCommerce website platforms undoubtedly an easy and reliable way to shop online. Besides this statistic, showing people’s high dependency on eCommerce platforms, the most trending topic people are talking about is chatbots.

Chatbots are the latest eCommerce trend now! This new term may boggle your mind with several questions, such as- what are chatbots? Are chatbots ideal for integrating with your website? How can these trending techs revolutionize your business? And a lot more. Therefore, we have come up with this blog post. Here we have described how chatbots are another great thing for eCommerce. So, what are you waiting for?

Let’s start!

What are Chatbots?

Chatbots are a computer program that processes human conversation and allows humans to interact with digital devices. In simple terms, they are more like mini-robots. They offer a similar experience, just like robots offering a better interaction with a real being. These techs answer a question with a single-line response. Saying clearly, then they are also considered as a digital assistant that offers a convenient and impressive personalization. 

Types of Bots

There are mainly two types of bots-

• An ordinary bot
• An intelligent chatbot [powered by the advanced Machines Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)]

Besides these two types nowadays, one more term gaining popularity is Natural Language Processing (NLP). It is replacing traditional chatbot systems, providing a good experience, handling customer queries, and taking over mainstream digital advertising. 

How Are Chatbots Transforming the eCommerce Industry?

According to research, 55 percent of consumers prefer communicating with a business via a messaging app. When we talk about how chatbots, transforming the eCommerce world, AI chatbots will always be at the top of the reasons list. This type of chatbots offers a unique experience with a faster communication experience and provides solutions to the problems quickly, transforming the business to a great extent.

These chatbots are also considered best in offering a better customer experience than their human counterparts. This is why several business websites are saying yes to integrate this technology into their online platforms. They are undoubtedly changing the whole ways of customer request processing and queries handling tasks. Let’s deep dive more into the concept to know more about how these chatbots have changed the eCommerce experience for both consumers and website owners. 

• Increase Lead Generation 

Chatbots for lead generations? Is this relevant to each other? Do you find these two terms weird together? Don’t be surprised as chatbots nowadays, considered an essential factor for increased lead generations. It is one of the smartest moves by website owners to improve their lead generations. Chatbots have high scalability, which means they can kick off a conversation with websites and also have the capability to segment the interested and uninterested users.

With the advancement in chatbot technology, website owners experiment integrating different chatbots into their websites to improve the customer experience and lead generation. Adding NLP and AI chatbots is also an excellent idea to improve the website’s performance and take the lead generation stats to a new level. Marketers and website owners also find chatbots a perfect solution for lead generation. They help them to attract leads from different corners of the world. 

• Improved UX (User Experience)

Marketers or website owners always strive for different ways to improve the user experience. After all, this is one of the essential factors to make your business successful. Amazing customer support is a topmost priority of businesses, and in this regard, chatbots play a crucial role. Chatbots offer several features that make them a perfect technology to rely on for providing better customer support. What are they? Know here-

Chatbots improve the UX by offering the below-listed features-

• Engage Users – Yes, they do. Chatbots send welcome messages, helping them to start. 
• Personalize – Full marks to personalization! It suggests products based on the specific needs of the user. 
• Resolve Queries – Chatbots help in answering the questions of the customers, responding effectively to common queries.
• Products Promotion – Chatbots have now become a great product promotion tool. They promote certain products or offer discounts to push the conversation rate. 
• Redirect – They also pass complex inquiries to appropriate agents.
   
• Personal Shopping Assistants

Imagine, for a moment, as a customer looking for an electronic item at any eCommerce website. Let’s say the item you are looking for is hardly available at different stores. So, in such a case, there would be several questions hitting your mind, such as- Is the seller trustworthy? Is the product available is of the finest quality or not? The ratings? The reviews? And a lot more. In this scenario, you have to go further searching on different websites. Think about the time you have wasted to find your desired products. Here chatbots come to the rescue. 

Let’s talk about the better part of this whole example. Imagine you have a chatbot to answer your queries. Chatbots can efficiently resolve your queries and offer a better solution to your problems. Thinking as per businessmen perspective, then this technology is a blessing for them. When your website features a chatbot equipped with technologies like Machine Learning, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence, you could provide a better customer experience and resolve their queries. The customer would feel delighted when they find the answer to their problems without wasting their time on other websites. Think of yourself as a business owner and ask yourself a question, “what could be other better way to deliver a great experience to customers than this?” 

• Offer Access to Customer Data

Chatbots are indeed another big thing for commerce that is transforming this industry to a great level. You can sense it with its other use. Chatbots allow you to use data for better sales as well as customer interactions. No matter if there is a human or a chatbot at the other end, the customer shares a bulk of information during a conversation time. This conversation practice or you can say, conversational marketing, has the benefit of learning and bridging the customer habit to fair use. During this conversation practice, chatbots collect data in bulk, including purchasing history or information regarding buying goods at a specific time and more. Such data help chatbots to offer a great experience to customers, meeting their needs. When a chatbot understands the customer’s purchase habits, it seems like you are stepping ahead in the future where a machine can meet your purchasing needs in no time. 

• Product Recommendations

Chatbots have the amazing feature of personalization and accessing customer data. These techs also offer relevant and personalized product recommendations based on buyers’ preferences, customers ’ buying habits, and purchase history. This product recommendation feature adds to the user experience and acts as a great medium to increase the lead generation, bringing leads to the sales funnel in the last stage. Although chatbots offer several unique features, this product recommendation feature is the one that raises the customer’s interest in buying products from a website and also add more to the UX. 

Chatbots are an effective marketing tool that helps today’s business to offer a great experience to consumers. This marketing weapon pushes any brand or product to consumers providing better product recommendations. This way, a marketer can highlight their products to the right customers and offer more choices to them. Have you heard about Alexa? Amazon’s use of Alexa is a perfect example of it. 

Conclusion

In the eCommerce world, there is a lot of competition. Hence, the website owners or marketers experiment with new strategies for the desired outcomes. And one of the primary focuses of business owners is delivering a dynamic customer experience every single time they land on their website. Achieving this milestone is not just possible without technology involvement. The introduction of chatbots in the eCommerce world will help online businesses to streamline their processes and improve the communication between the businesses and their customers. This post has covered everything you need to know about how chatbots are transforming the eCommerce industry. 

Article Contributed By

Ravi Sharma, CEO of Webomaze - # 1 SEO Company in Chandigarh is a highly enthusiastic entrepreneur. He has got a great grip on the idea of effective eCommerce Strategies, SEO processes, and tactics that are vital for virtual exposure. He is a fun-loving person and a keen traveler who always hunts to find adventure in new places.

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