The world of online retail has transformed an awful lot over the past few years.
There has been an obvious decline in the footfall of brick-and-mortar stores. It was reported in May this year that high street sales were on a 3.3% decline from last year.
With there being so many reasons behind this, it’s hard to narrow it all down to just one explanation. But one thing does seem clear, customers who shop online expect the same in-store customer experience.
As a result, live chat software has grown to become an important feature of most ecommerce sites today.
With customers expecting rapid communication, deeper product insights and round-the-clock support, more traditional forms of communication like telephone and email just do not tick these boxes. A recent study found that 41% of consumers find a website with live chat installed to be far more trustworthy than one that does not. It shows a certain authenticity from retail brands, and customers really value the 24/7 support.
The one issue that ecommerce Live Chat tools are facing at the moment is stagnancy. Immediate and consistent support is brilliant, but with so much potential, what more can be done with live chat? With live chat landing itself as an important aspect of ecommerce sites, there are growing innovations to be explored.
Bunting for example, one of our personalisation partners, is offering a live chat tool with a fresh concept behind it. Made up of three main functions, Bunting’s new ecommerce live chat plugin is designed to draw more shoppers to your site, keeping them there for longer.
The first feature Shopcast, provides a live streaming function allowing brands to live stream video content directly from their ecommerce sites. Designed to be used by influencers, product experts and brand ambassadors, Shopcast uses video to draw shoppers to your website and encourages interaction from viewers (without all the distractions that Facebook Live and Youtube have). Viewers can follow the broadcasters journey through your products, ask questions, vote on products and become incentivised by time-sensitive discount codes.
Live streaming has become a huge part of ecommerce marketing and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. In fact, a recent report suggested that viewers will spend 8-times longer watching a live streamed video compared to on-demand content. It seems that live streaming has the potential to become a huge part of ecommerce live chat within the next few years.
The second feature of the tool is also pretty cool. ShopWith works from the same pop-up window, allowing your visitors to invite their friends to a chatbox on your website. Groups of friends can shop together, follow the links to products pages and chat whilst browsing your site. ShopWith makes your website far more interactive, bringing the social aspect of physical retail to your online store. Retailers can also set up ‘group specific’ discount codes, incentivising your shoppers to invite more visitors onto your site. Live chat is a great feature, so why not invite your friends along too?
As for the final feature of this live chat tool, there is an integrated agent chat. LiveChat provides shoppers with constant customer-support, so your visitors don’t have to leave your site with unanswered questions. This is a cost-effective way to boost conversions, collect customer feedback and continue building trust and loyalty from your shoppers.
It seems that with the growing popularity of ecommerce live chat, as well as a growing demand for live streamed video, merging the two together is an effective way to reach much larger audiences. Plus you’re providing shoppers with valuable content.
Bunting offer their new live chat tools on a ‘free for life’ account. There is also larger paid plans available too. Get in touch with these guys if you have any questions.