What is the Conversational Commerce Market Size?
The potential influence of a conversational approach to e-commerce is huge. Any store in the whole world could benefit from it and increase their bottom line almost instantly.
This sounds like a given, right?
After all, conversational commerce is improving real-time customer communication through chatbots or messaging applications. And we know consumers want real-time communication.
But, what is the conversational commerce market size? How much of an impact can a conversational approach really have on transactions, costs, and revenue? How many businesses stand to thrive under a conversational strategy?
This is what we are going to cover now. Not so much the actual strategy, but rather the numbers that are going to be influenced by conversational commerce.
The size of the e-commerce market
Did you know the Internet is huge? ubisend, providing incredible insights since 1973.
All jokes aside, a big chunk of the (huge) Internet is occupied by a growing number of e-commerce stores. The guys at Lemonstand published a cool infographic, providing a snapshot of the e-commerce market size in 2015.
Turns out there are over 12 Million stores roaming the web. More interestingly, these 12 Million processed close to $1.6 Trillion (£1.25 Trillion).
Source: Lemondstand
That is Trillion with a 'T', also known as lotsa dough.
The impact of conversational commerce
It is interesting to think of the impact a conversational approach to e-commerce could have on those 12 Million or so stores. The role of conversational commerce being to make every interaction more efficient, there must be a financial impact.
Unfortunately, we have very little access to actual case studies, numbers, or data on this particular impact. All we have is research and projections - and not always in e-commerce.
In the 'close enough to blow your mind' category, we have this research by Juniper Research. These guys figured out that by 2022 businesses across the world could cumulatively save up to £6 Billion.
While this number is indeed impressive, I much prefer this simple drill down: each interaction handled by a chatbot will save a business between £0.40 and £0.55.
Now, these are numbers we can relate to.
Really, though, what will be the impact?
You're right. These numbers are not directly tied to e-commerce websites. Unfortunately, right now this is the only option we have.
Finding out the amount of money an e-commerce store can save by adopting a conversational commerce approach is the first step. By streamlining some of their processes into automated messages (instead of clunky emails or, you know, costly humans), stores are due to save a lot of money.
On top of that, you may add the adequate up sales, cross sales, and customer nurturing opportunities a mobile messaging conversational strategy will bring.
The impact? Again, no one knows exactly, but we can anticipate it to be enormous.
In our most recent chatbot research, we found UK consumers are ready to start spending money straight from a chatbot. Even more interestingly, millennials (26-36-year-olds) are willing to spend more than their older brethren: £481 for the former, £353 for the latter.
As chatbot technology spreads, consumers become more confident using them, and more businesses deploy conversational commerce strategies through them, we can only expect this number to grow.
