Chatbots in Ecommerce

laptop on a desk, with a notepad and pen

The possibilities are endless when it comes to advertising your ecommerce products online. But what if I told you that you could campaign and allow customers to purchase your products all on one platform? A chatbot is what you need!

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a programme that generates conversation with users and is made to complete specific objectives and services. When it comes to your ecommerce company, chatbots are designed to do all of the following:

  • Complete buyer's purchases
  • Provide customer support
  • Generate sales
  • Improve user experience
  • Retarget customers

By providing solutions, tips and assistance to user queries, chatbots have the ability to gain knowledge on what the customer is interested in. This will allow you to generate product suggestions based on their responses. Redirecting users to your company website will also help to create a helpful and enjoyable shopping experience whilst boosting sales, conversions and user engagement.

Chatbots are capable of providing almost unlimited solutions to user queries. Because of this, more people are trusting chatbots due to the vast amount of knowledge that the platform can provide.

In order to meet the increasing demand of this platform, it is important to consider implementing chatbots into your marketing strategy. Now a common feature on social media, it has never been easier to build a chatbot platform for your company.

Facebook Messenger Bots

Facebook Messenger is the second most downloaded social networking application so far this year and has over two billion monthly users! With such a huge audience, this platform can help to generate a greater brand awareness for your company.

Based on specific responses from the user, Facebook Messenger bots are designed to automatically create relevant conversation to help generate leads and entice the customer to complete specific objectives. This could be anything from making an appointment or buying a product on your website. In order to fulfil this, the messenger bot works with Facebook API to gain access to user information. This makes it easier for the customer to complete certain requests that the bot may need in order to reach your goal.

Not only are messenger bots a great way of increasing brand awareness and sales, but the platform can also act as a CRM system. By gaining information from users and understanding their responses, companies will have the ability to target the right audience for future conversations.

Building your Messenger Bot

There is no coding knowledge needed when building a Facebook Messenger bot which makes it easily available for any company.

Firstly, it is important to decide what you want to accomplish when using a chatbot service. Once you have identified this, you will then need to plan out an ideal conversation in order to better understand the potential outcome from customers. Using the if this, then that scenario can help you to produce effective solutions for whatever response you get.

Remember to be honest and casual in the behaviour of your messages and don't forget to give users the option to talk to a real person as this can help to prevent any negative experiences. Making it look like a realistic conversation will also help to gain better insights.

Implementing video, links and photos is a great way of improving user experience and makes it easy to track the engagement and performance of your messenger bot.

After you have built your messenger bot, it is important not to forget to test your conversation as this will allow you to identify the effectiveness of your service before it reaches potential customers.

There are platforms such as Mobile Monkey and Chatfuel that provide guides on how to build an effective chatbot on Facebook Messenger.

Promoting your Messenger Bot

There are many ways of promoting your messenger bot to help gain a wider customer engagement. Some of these include:

  • Widget on your Website- A simple but effective method. Implementing a chatbot widget onto your website is a quick and easy way for customers to ask questions about your products and services.
  • Facebook Ad- If a user clicks on your Facebook ad, you can redirect them to your chatbot service so they can learn more about the product, find their size or purchase straight from the chat.
  • Engagement Post- Creating a post that generates engagement with customers will help chatbot to identify who is interested in your products. If they engage in any way, the chatbot will start a conversation where you can talk about offers or exclusive products.

There are a range of possibilities that come with using chatbot services for your ecommerce company. Messenger bots are expected to be integrated in all digital strategies and are guaranteed to make you more money! What are you waiting for?