Ecommerce chatbots are becoming increasingly popular and useful tools to help businesses expand their customer base and increase sales.
Why so?
AI 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.
Ecommerce chatbots are virtual assistants that interact with customers on online shopping platforms. They enhance customer service by answering questions, providing support, and even facilitating transactions.
Not all ecommerce chatbots are the same. They come in different types, each serving a specific purpose. Here are some of the common types of ecommerce chatbots you’re likely to run into.
The downside is that they’re not flexible and struggle when asked a question outside the scope of programming.
AI-powered chatbots are more conversational, can handle diverse queries, and offer personalized recommendations.
From solving customer queries, updating them on order status, to generating leads, ecommerce chatbots bring many benefits.
Let’s look at some of them.
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 Salesforce survey found that 43% of customers likely stopped buying from a brand in 2023 due to poor customer experience. These negative experiences can include long wait times, rude agents, or too many transfers.
Image via Salesforce
AI solutions for ecommerce, such as chatbots, help businesses avoid negative experiences by providing on-demand assistance.
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
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 for ecommerce.
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.
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, ultimately boosting customer retention.
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.
A study by Gorgias in 2024 showed that automating customer service through chatbots increased repeat purchases by 36%.
Image via Gorgias
That said, let’s now look at how to build a chatbot for your ecommerce store.
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.
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:
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.
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
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Image via REVE Chat
Tool Level
Usability
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
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Image via Tidio
Tool Level
Usability
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
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Tool Level
Usability
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 ecommerce sales process with its built-in conversational commerce, lead generation, and automation features.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Tool Level
Usability
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
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Tool Level
Usability
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
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Image via Botsify
Tool Level
Usability
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
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Tool Level
Usability
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.
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 it out’ 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.
Chatbots built for ecommerce stores can be used to track many metrics.
Here are some key metrics to track:
While ecommerce chatbots have simplified how businesses interact with their customers, they’re limited in many ways. Here are some of the common challenges and limitations of ecommerce chatbots.
Ecommerce chatbots often struggle to fully understand users, relying on programmed responses and AI to interpret input. However, slang, abbreviations, and typos can make it challenging for them to accurately grasp the meaning behind customer queries. As a result, chatbots can miss the tone and emotion of conversations, leading to incorrect responses and poor user experiences.
This makes it difficult for chatbots to consistently provide accurate responses, as they often miss the tone and emotions behind conversations, leading to incorrect answers and a negative user experience.
Ecommerce chatbots excel at handling simple queries like “Where’s my order?” or “What’s your return policy?” When a question involves multiple steps or specific details, chatbots often get stuck and can't provide effective solutions.
Sometimes, chatbots redirect users to live agents when they can’t handle a query. While this can be helpful, the handoff isn't always seamless, often requiring customers to repeat their questions, which leads to unnecessary delays.
Many ecommerce businesses serve global customers, but their chatbots often support only one or two languages. This makes it hard for non-English speakers to get help. A customer trying to use an ecommerce chatbot in their native language might get confused or inaccurate replies.
An even bigger challenge is that building effective multilingual chatbots is tricky. It requires proper translation and cultural understanding. Without these elements, the chatbot can’t provide reliable service across different regions.
Personalization is important in ecommerce. Customers want content recommendations that match their preferences and shopping history. However, ecommerce chatbots often provide generic responses that don’t feel tailored to individual needs.
Furthermore, some types of ecommerce chatbots fail to adapt over time. If a user interacts with the bot multiple times, the bot is expected to learn and improve its responses. Without this learning capability, the chatbot becomes less useful and less engaging.
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:
Whether you’re just getting started or are experienced in using chatbot technology, our article has provided some helpful tips and marketing 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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