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In today’s fast-paced, competitive e-commerce environment, the ability to engage customers and deliver stellar experiences makes a big difference.
One area gaining steam among brands is conversational e-commerce. Simply put, conversational e-commerce is all about discussing and carrying out transactions via messaging tools like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, often with the use of chatbots.
Let’s look at five reasons brands need to embrace conversational e-commerce.
What’s The Big Deal About Conversational E-Commerce?
1. Real-time Action:
What is e-commerce? It’s all about guided selling. And what better way to steer customers to purchase than taking advantage of messaging programs that can give instant feedback and recommendations?
For example, companies that use chatbots and instant messaging apps can respond to customer questions and queries in real-time. If a consumer is looking to buy a pair of pants, they can ask questions and receive personalized responses any time of day.
Best of all, conversational commerce assistances are able to learn from each customer interaction, which means the programs keep getting better.
2. Popular For Shoppers On The Go
It’s certainly no secret. Consumers are out shopping on their phones. PerDeloitte research, 58 percent of smartphone users have engaged in store-related shopping on their devices. Additionally, the study found that half of mobile shoppers use their phones while they’re in a store and the other half use their phones on the way to the store.
As a result, conversational e-commerce is the perfect channel to reach these mobile shoppers who are already using their phones for buying decisions. Messaging apps provide easy access and don’t require customers to visit websites or make calls to complete a purchase. Instead, they can just log onto their phones to tap and shop.
3. Wealth of Insights
Aside from attracting customers and helping fulfill purchases, chatbots and messaging apps can produce a goldmine of marketing data.
You could look at conversation histories to better understand what potential consumers are looking for, or you could even run a specific chatbot campaign to get information from your audience. Conversational e-commerce provides a cost-effective way for brands to generate data while focusing on their customer experience.
4. Provides Opportunities For Creative Flair
Communication is everything when it comes to e-commerce. But many emails and standard engagement methods can be dry and dull. Chatbots and messaging strategies with a personalized flair can help your business stand out and keep customers coming back.
Conversational e-commerce gives your brand an opportunity to be unique; a chance to stand out from the competition with a distinctive ‘personality’ and communication style.
5. Can Be Combined With Native Content
A lot of businesses and companies pay top dollar for influencers and other media outlets to publish their content in a way that sounds natural. With conversational e-commerce, you can integrate your other content inside of your chatbot messages.
Instead of promoting information like a blog post or website page separately, use conversational e-commerce to give customers the information they need while also highlighting specific articles or posts (that can also link to other products).
This serves as a natural form or advertising for other items and a huge component to harnessing top of the funnel users who might be interested in learning more about something you have to offer.
Many high-growth businesses are integrating conversational e-commerce because online messaging apps look poised for a bright future.
Right now, 37 percent of the globe’s population use messaging apps, and more than 40 million people across the world have a smart speaker (like Amazon’s Alexa). These trends are not projected to stop anytime soon, especially since the number of mobile phone users is only growing higher each year.
As a result, businesses and brands need to embrace conversational e-commerce if they wish to foster greater customer intimacy, drive more sales, and reach more consumers across the globe who are active on messaging applications.
