Chatbots have been cropping up more and more in recent years. But what was originally a fun and quirky gimmick has now turned into a genuinely useful and compelling marketing tool.
Businesses of all sizes are using chatbots for a wide range of purposes. So how can you use chatbots for your own website? Here are seven useful things you can do with them.
1. Convert Abandoned Carts
If you sell any products on your website, you’ll no doubt have a lot of experience with abandoned carts. These are where visitors add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase.
To encourage them to complete the sale, you might send them an email to remind them about the products in their carts. But you can use chatbots to do the same thing.
When a visitor lands on your site again after adding an item to their cart, set the chatbot up to give them a quick reminder that they have an item waiting for them. You can then encourage them to complete the transaction and even add a special offer to tempt them further.
You can also use chatbots to reduce abandoned carts in the first place. This comes down to the reasons why people abandon their carts. Sometimes it is because they are not sure about something like the price, shipping fee, or returns process.
Your chatbot could provide all this information at the crucial moment when they are considering making the purchase, guiding them through the process and helping to prevent them from leaving without completing their orders.
2. Keep Visitors on Your Site for Longer
One of the goals of any business is to keep visitors on their website. If users discover your website in search, the longer they stay, the lower your bounce rate will be, helping with your SEO.
And the longer people stay on your site in any situation, the more opportunity you have to engage with them, build a relationship and increase website conversions.
Chatbots are a great way to increase engagement. They can welcome people onto the website as soon as they arrive and provide them with answers. They can be humorous, and they can provide useful information.
You can also use a chatbot for lead generation. Rather than providing visitors with a static form to fill in, use your chatbot to collect their email address and name. That way you may be able to encourage more visitors to sign up to your newsletter.
3. Beef Up Your Customer Support
Providing better customer support is a proven way to generate more business. There is a big trust issue online, and people want to be able to trust your business before they part with their money.
As such, you often need to spend time answering their questions and putting their doubts to rest before they want to do business with you.
Many businesses put great effort into customer support, providing a number of channels to contact the support team. You might already provide an email address, phone number, Skype, social media and live chat, and you probably do your best to respond quickly.
But chatbots can take this to the next level.
A chatbot is always on hand to provide instant customer support when needed, making it even more effective than live chat. The visitor does not even have to wait for a member of staff to become free. They have their own personal assistant ready to help them at all times.
It’s good for your business too. You don’t have to spend money on extra support staff when you have a bot working for you, and you can still provide 24/7 customer support. This helps you save time and increase productivity while providing your visitors with a better experience.
4. Provide Product Recommendations
Another great use for chatbots is to recommend products to customers. When a new visitor lands on your site, they want to explore what you have to offer. Your chatbot could suggest products to them and encourage more sales without you having to lift a finger.
Visitors could even ask chatbots for some advice. Instead of searching the store for something they want, they could ask questions and get recommendations based on colour, brand, size and more.
Your chatbot can point them in the right direction, improving the experience and providing value at the same time – leading to more sales for you.
You could also use a chatbot to cross-sell products. When a visitor is thinking about making a purchase or has already bought something, your chatbot could appear with a few useful recommendations to try and get a few more sales.
Many stores cross-sell their products already, but a chatbot can make the experience more personal. Rather than simply displaying the product, you can use a chatbot to say why the product is suitable. This is a more natural way to recommend products, and in this way, the chatbot is acting like a personal shopping assistant.
5. Keep Customers Informed About Delivery
After a purchase has been made, chatbots can still be used to improve the experience. Most people want to be kept up to date with delivery information after they have purchased a product, and emails are the standard process for this. You may already send an automated email when the product is shipped and on the day it is arriving.
Chatbots can also be used to help people track their products. By using a chatbot with real-time tracking, you can provide the customer with all the details they need. They can ask the chatbot about their specific order and get answers immediately.
This is something that would take up time for your staff, but a chatbot can do it automatically.
6. Collect Useful Data
You probably know already how useful customer data can be. Perhaps you use Google Analytics and other tools to gather data on customer activity, and chatbots can also be a great source of data.
Your chatbot can gather data on the questions that it is asked, and you can then analyse the scripts to get access to revealing information. You can find out the sorts of things that people ask, their biggest problems they have when on your site, and the most important information they need.
When you find out what is going right and wrong, you can improve the experience for them and get more conversions.
7. Answer Questions
One of the best uses for chatbots is to simply answer questions. You may have an FAQ section on your site or a whole library of content, but a chatbot can make this content a lot more accessible.
Your chatbot can answer all the standard questions, providing a useful way for people to find answers. You could even use it as a more advanced FAQ tool. After answering a question, your chatbot could make a suggestion and follow up with questions to get more engagement.
Chatbots are great for answering standard questions. For more complex questions, you still have your support staff, but the chatbot frees them up to provide assistance where it is most needed.
Put Chatbots to Work for Your Site
Chatbots have become a common feature on many websites, and people like using them. They can help you to provide a better experience to your visitors, boost productivity and increase sales.
If you have yet to experiment with a chatbot, try it out for yourself. See how you can put it to use. As you can see, it can help your business in many ways. Once you start taking advantage of the benefits, you may find that a chatbot becomes essential to the running of your website.
