Ecommerce chatbots are becoming increasingly popular and useful tools to help businesses expand their customer base and increase sales.
Why so?
Chatbots offer something that humans find difficult to do—instant responses and 24/7 service. In addition, they can gather insights on customers, capture leads, make personalized product recommendations, and help boost sales.
Not surprisingly, 62% of businesses are looking to add chatbots on their sites.
If you are among them, go ahead and read this article.
We’ll explore the advantages of ecommerce chatbots, how to build them, and everything else you need to know about using them to grow your online business.
Table of Contents
Ecommerce Chatbots: The Benefits
From solving customer queries, updating them on order status, to generating leads, ecommerce chatbots bring many benefits.
Let’s look at some of them.
Provide On-Demand Assistance
Ecommerce users have a range of questions on shipping costs, delivery date, order tracking, returns, and refunds.
If they can’t find quick answers to these questions, they are likely to abandon your site and go to a competitor’s site immediately.
A recent survey found that 76% of shoppers will stop engaging with a business after just one negative experience. These negative experiences can include long wait times, rude agents, or too many transfers.
AI solutions for ecommerce, such as chatbots, help businesses avoid negative experiences by providing on-demand assistance.
Make Personalized Product Recommendations
Ecommerce chatbots can help you make personalized product recommendations for customers based on their past purchase history and preferences.
This can help you create a more personalized shopping experience for them. It can even help you upsell or cross-sell products.
A great example here is the H&M chatbot on Kik that offers outfit recommendations after asking the users a few questions on their style preferences.
Image via chatbotguide.org
Generate Leads And Boost Conversions
Ecommerce chatbots replace the boring web forms that need to be manually filled by your customers. By providing a simple way to obtain your visitors’ contact details, chatbots streamline lead generation.
Image via Engati
You can use ecommerce chatbots to also gather valuable insights about your leads and customers. For example, a chatbot can ask your ecommerce visitors about their interests.
If the customer says “laptop,” the chatbot can list laptops and any special offers available on them.
Here are the results enjoyed by one such ecommerce business that leveraged an AI chatbot on their platform.
Image via Drift
Chatbots are also powerful tools for increasing conversions.
Kia, for instance, experienced a 21 percent growth in conversions after launching its chatbot, Kian.
Increase Customer Satisfaction and Retention
Ecommerce chatbots can be a valuable tool for boosting your customer experience.
By providing instant responses to common questions, and proactively reaching out to customers, chatbots can help you provide a more personalized and satisfying experience for your customers.
For instance, Sephora's chatbots are designed to help customers with their shopping experience in a variety of ways.
They provide personalized recommendations, answer questions about products, and help customers place orders for products and services.
Image via chatbotguide.org
Case in point—ecommerce chatbots helped Sephora boost user engagement in addition to increasing orders by 11%.
That said, let’s now look at how to build a chatbot for your ecommerce site.
Steps to Build A Chatbot
Building ecommerce chatbots is not as challenging as you might think. There are tools and resources that help you build a custom chatbot with ease.
To help you get started, we’ve listed the steps you can take to build a chatbot for your ecommerce store.
Step 1: List the Features You Need From the Chatbot
Before you start building ecommerce chatbots, it's important to define their purpose.
What do you want the chatbot to achieve?
For example, do you want it to help customers with their purchase decisions, or simply answer questions about your products and services?
Here are some of the features of chatbots in ecommerce that you may want:
- Answer complex queries
- Support omnichannel conversations
- Multilingual support
- Make tailored product suggestions
- Post-sales engagement
- Providing order and shipping updates
Step 2: Research the Chatbot Platforms
There are many different chatbot platforms available that can help you create your ecommerce chatbot. It’s important to choose one that integrates well with your platform.
Go through this list of some of the best ecommerce chatbots to see which one is right for your business.
1. REVE Chat
Image via REVE Chat
REVE chat is one of the best platforms for building AI-based ecommerce chatbots that allows businesses to communicate with their customers in real time.
The chatbot has a number of features that make it an essential tool for businesses:
Key Features
- Real-time messaging
- A wide range of integrations including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat
- Visual flow builder
- Seamless human handover
- A range of customization options
- Sentiment analysis to detect negative and offensive responses.
Pros
- Zero coding skills required
- Integrates with major ecommerce and messaging platforms
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- REVE Chat is one of the most expensive ecommerce chatbots making it unsuitable for small businesses
Usability
- Easy to use
Skill Level
- Beginner
Pricing
- Standard: $44 (1 chatbot)
- Advanced: $224 (10 chatbots)
- Enterprise: $449 (25 chatbots)
- Custom: Contact sales
2. Tidio
Image via Tidio
Tidio's ecommerce chatbots are customizable and integrate with popular messaging and ecommerce platforms. With its drag-and-drop editor, you can quickly build an ecommerce chatbot that helps you ace customer support and boost sales.
Key Features
- Multiple chatbot templates, triggers, actions, and conditions
- Useful ecommerce features such as tracking order status and cart abandonment
- Automates FAQs to streamline customer support
- Saves client profiles and shows live visitors’ list
- Visual drag-and-drop builder
Pros
- Easy-to-use visual editor
- Over 35 pre-built templates
- Free plan
Cons
- Does not allow users to manage chats on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp
Usability
- Easy to use
Skill Level
- Beginner/Intermediate
Pricing
- Free plan
- Communicator: $15.83
- Chatbots: $39.50
- Tidio+: 240.83
3. Giosg
Image via Giosg
If you’re looking for ecommerce chatbots that make it easy to sell products and services online, you can explore Giosg.
From providing artificial intelligence-based responses to customer queries and intelligent targeting to chatbot analytics, Giosg’s ecommerce chatbots do it all.
Check out the features of this chatbot built for ecommerce businesses:
Key Features
- AI chatbot with advanced machine learning ability that matches chat messages to the responses from knowledge base
- Interaction builder and AI-powered targeting to optimize upselling, cross-selling, and interactions
- Create engaging ecommerce chatbots by adding images, GIFs, videos, and emojis
- Ready-made templates for FAQ, lead generation, and demos
- Integrates with popular CRM platforms including HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zapier
Pros
- Easy-to-use visual editor
- Zero code chatbot builder
- Easy to manage multiple chats
- Real-time analytics to streamline bot training
Cons
- The user interface for its reporting tools needs improvement.
Usability
- Easy to use
Skill Level
- Beginner
Pricing
- Starter: Approx $52.21 (€49)
- Business: Approx $158.75 (€149)
- Premium: Approx $531.65 (€499)
- Enterprise: Custom
4. Engati
Image via Engati
Whether you have a Shopify store or an ecommerce business on another platform, one of the best ecommerce chatbots you can use is Engati.
As one of the platforms that helps build AI-based ecommerce chatbots, Engati enables easy integration with popular messaging apps.
What’s more?
You can optimize your sales process with its built-in conversational commerce, lead generation, and automation features.
Key Features
- Omni-channel ecommerce chatbots that can be deployed on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, and over 10 other channels
- OneView Inbox to manage chats across platforms
- Conversational AI helps target customers with personalization
- Natural language processing (NLP) helps make tailored product recommendations
- Drag-and-drop chatbot builder
Pros
- Supports multilingual chatbots
- Automates sales and marketing
- Chatbots are easy to train
- Useful platform analytics
Cons
- Knowledge base needs improvement
Usability
- Easy to use
Skill Level
- Beginner
Pricing
- Engati offers three plans — Standard, Enterprise, and Partner. Contact sales for pricing information.
5. Verloop
Image via Verloop
Verloop is one of the leading ecommerce chatbot platforms that you can use to build your own ecommerce chatbot.
Powered by artificial intelligence, its chatbots are designed to mimic human conversation. This allows ecommerce companies to understand the customer's needs and provide relevant information and recommendations.
Key Features
- Media-rich messaging and multi-intent recognition
- Omnichannel ecommerce AI chatbot streamlines online shopping across website, WhatsApp, and Facebook
- Conversational AI helps understand the intent of online shoppers and improve their buying experience
- Keep website visitors updated on offers, orders, refunds, and shipment
- Customer support bot automates FAQ responses
Pros
- Smooth handoff to human agents to boost customer experience
- Unified dashboard for analytics and reporting
- Webhooks and APIs
- Sentiment analysis
Cons
- Takes time to set up and use
Usability
- Moderately easy to use
Skill Level
- Beginner/Intermediate
Pricing
- Contact sales for pricing information.
6. Botsify
Image via Botsify
Botsify has been named as one of the best tools for building ecommerce chatbots. While you can embed its chatbots into your online store, messaging apps, and social media, Botsify makes it easy to automate your sales and marketing processes too.
Here are some of the features of this chatbot platform:
Key Features
- Integrates with multiple platforms including ecommerce websites, WhatsApp, Facebook, WordPress, Instagram, and Telegram
- Conversational forms to generate leads
- Schedules sales calls
- Supports multiple languages
- Professional chatbot development services with the pro plan
Pros
- Offers multilingual chatbots
- Automates sales and marketing
- Chatbots are easy to train
- Useful platform analytics
Cons
- Knowledge base needs improvement.
Usability
- Easy to use
Skill Level
- Beginner
Pricing
- Do it yourself: $49
- Done for you: $149
- Custom: Contact sales
7. Kustomer
Image via Kustomer
Online retailers looking for ecommerce chatbots that can make website visitors’ online shopping experience more convenient will want to check out Kustomer.
The chatbot building platform helps you build AI-powered bots that can solve customers’ complex queries, track order status, and delivery progress.
Take a look at its features to see if it's one of the best ecommerce chatbots for your ecommerce store.
Key Features
- Deliver SMS, voice, and email support without switching channels
- Timeline view and a unified workspace to manage customer interactions and data
- Integrates with popular ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Solidus
- Messenger bot predicts responses and automates workflow using machine learning
- AI-based chatbot helps you tailor experiences across customer journey based on their preferences, history, intent, context, and more
Pros
- Pre-built chatbot templates
- Sentiment analysis
- Automatic routing of bot conversation
- In-depth reporting
Cons
- The interface is not very user-friendly.
Usability
- Has a slight learning curve.
Skill Level
- Intermediate/Expert
Pricing
- Professional: $29 per user
- Business: $49 per user
- Enterprise:$89 per user
- Ultimate: $139 per user
Step 3: Build Your Chatbot
Once you've chosen your platform, it's time to start building your chatbot. This involves creating the bot's dialogue flow and design, as well as programming any advanced features you may want to include.
Start by customizing the look, font, color, and other design elements of your chatbot.
You’ll then need to specify what actions the chatbot needs to do and set the conditions and triggers. For instance, you can set the chatbot to launch every time a visitor returns to a specific page on your website or uses a specific keyword.
Image via Tidio
Most chatbot builders let you develop the conversation flow with the help of building blocks that you can drag and drop.
For instance, if you want to display a special offer to those who visit a specific landing page, start by setting the trigger.
Then, enter the welcome message with the offer that you want the chatbot to send. Now, set quick replies and specific messages for people who want a discount and those who don’t.
Step 4: Test the Chatbot
Most platforms will offer a way to test the chatbot you have built before you deploy it.
For instance, Botsify has a ‘Test Your Bot Here’ button on the right hand corner of the screen.
Image via Botsify
If you are using Tidio, you can find the ‘test the bot’ button in the ‘My Chatbots’ section.
Image via Tidio
Once you're happy with how it works, you can launch it on your ecommerce website for customers to start using.
Step 5: Track the Metrics
Chatbots built for ecommerce stores can be used to track many metrics.
Here are some key metrics to track:
- The number of messages sent through the chatbot
- The number of successful conversations
- The number of conversions (sales) generated through the chatbot
- The average order value for orders placed through the chatbot
- The customer satisfaction score for the chatbot
- The retention rate for customers who use the chatbot
FAQ
Q1. What is the benefit of chatbots for ecommerce?
A. Chatbots provide marketers with a powerful tool that can help them engage customers more effectively and increase conversion rates.
In addition to providing personalized customer service, chatbots can gather information, and automate processes like order placements and returns.
Q2. Does Amazon use chatbots?
A. Amazon has recently developed automated support chatbots to help customers find what they're looking for quickly and easily.
Q3. What are the 4 types of chatbots?
A. Task-oriented chatbots are focused on performing specific tasks such as booking tickets or providing customer service. AI-based chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) to provide personalized answers.
Rule-based chatbots use a predefined set of rules and documents to drive the conversation. Finally, hybrid bots combine both task and conversational elements for a more complete experience.
Q4. How are chatbots used in ecommerce?
A. Chatbots can be used to provide product recommendations, answer frequently asked questions, process orders, and provide customer service support.
Q5. Which are the best ecommerce chatbots?
A. Some of the best ecommerce chatbots include:
- REVE Chat
- Botsify
- Giosg
- Kustomer
Wrapping Up
Whether you’re just getting started or are experienced in using chatbot technology, our article has provided some helpful tips and strategies for maximizing your success with ecommerce chatbots.
With this information in hand, you can take advantage of the opportunities presented by chatbot technology and get your business growing faster than ever before!
That said, building a successful ecommerce business entails so much more than adding chatbots.
If you need expert help with search engine optimization, content marketing, or email marketing, feel free to contact us.
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