The Best Chatbot Design Advice for Ecommerce
Whether you want to send discount codes, make people smile with your product videos or help your customers to buy your stuff, a chatbot is a viable tool.
Consumers are warming up to them and the most popular delivery channels (messaging applications) have billions of users waiting for you. However, in a data and metrics driven industry, how do you make sure you are using the best chatbot design for ecommerce?
Well, I am a simple guy, and I think in ecommerce it is easy to get carried away with data, optimising and testing. We will get to that, but first, let us start at the start of developing a chatbot.
Define the goal
I know, I know. The goal, it is easy, right? Sell. More. Stuff.
Well, it is that, but we have to at least pretend to be a little more c-suite.
So, what is the goal of your ecommerce chatbot?
Is it to help a user to purchase through product selection and journey? To attract visitors to your website? To retarget them if they do not purchase? To promote discounts or perhaps help top up shopping carts?
Ultimately, I am confident a chatbot can do all of this and more, but you know, ecommerce and all, we have to test and iterate. Decide on your starting point, benchmark and improve.
Entertain
Chatbots are new to consumers; they do not know what to think or do with them yet. It is a bit like mobile apps when they first came about.
"But I just need my phone to make calls."
- said every old person.
"Oh, there's an app for that."
- said every old person one year later.
As an early adopter of chatbot technology, your duty, regardless of the goal, is to entertain your users and show them why you think your chatbot is the best way to help them buy.
Entertain them, make them feel like they are the only person you care about (which, BTW, a chatbot is great for) and guide them effortlessly to their need (which happens to be your stuff).
The best chatbot design for ecommerce? Ultimately, it is a personal shopper. An entertaining, helpful and attentive personal shopper whose single purpose is to help the user solve their problem.
Be available
With a potential of 29 digital channels for your chatbot to be available through, you better be sure it lives where your users want it.
What is the point of spending lots of money on a Facebook Messenger ecommerce bot when your users are Instagram junkies? Or, why roll out an on-site personal shopper bot when your goal is to increase traffic to the site?
Different countries, demographics, and industries will have different requirements. What works for some ecommerce plays will not work for others.
Ask your users where they hang out.
Do they use SMS or Telegram? Slack or Microsoft Teams?
One of the amazing benefits of chatbots is that you can go where your users are, rather than force them to come to you.
Another advantage of chatbots? Always online, 24/7, and available in any language. The best chatbots should be designed never to be busy or offline, never ignore someone, and always offer the same level of service.
At this exact moment in time, we're in the middle of a perfect storm
The technology is ready. Your users are ready. It is time to deliver a personal experience, at scale.
It is time to deliver an experience.
