eCommerce
If you're in the ecommerce business (or you've read our other resources), chances are you know the importance of connecting with your customers personally. And with conversational commerce, you can take customer engagement one step further and create an even better ecommerce experience.
With an engaged customer base, you'll retain more of them, increase the volume and frequency that they order, and make them happier overall. In doing this, you'll also get plenty of zero-party data that you can use to further optimize your conversational commerce strategy and make improvements in other areas of your business.
Best of all, you'll have the numbers to prove it.
There are five ecommerce KPIs that every business should monitor.
Of course, individual businesses might have their own unique KPIs to measure. For example, ecommerce businesses that use the subscription business model (e.g., Amazon Prime) might also measure churn rate and subscription renewal rate.
Cart abandonment, another common metric in ecommerce, is also worth watching, along with percentage of overall revenue generated by a particluar channel.
In general, though, the five KPIs above are the most important ones to track when it comes to ecommerce.
Conversational commerce is an incredibly powerful marketing tool for boosting these KPIs. It allows customers to interact with your business in real-time, which means that they can get the help they need immediately.
As a whole, conversational commerce is defined as the intersection between customer experience and commerce, providing customers with an easy way to access information about products, make purchases, and more.
Conversational commerce is executed through multiple forms of communication. Depending on the products you sell, their level of complexity, and the amount of customer support your business needs, choosing the right conversational commerce platform will be essential.
A chatbot can provide customers with quick, accurate answers to their questions. You've probably seen one of these on a website's FAQ page or at the bottom corner of your screen when you load a webpage.
They are especially helpful when it comes to basic customer service inquiries, providing product recommendations, and moving customers through the first step in the sales funnel.
SMS is the perfect opportunity to meet your customers where they are—on their phones. Texting or messaging customers can be a great way to send special deals, alert them when something they've been eyeing is back in stock, and keep them updated with product launches.
Using the Humankind platform, businesses can interact with their customers 1:1 to give them personalized shopping experiences via two-way SMS.
Leveraging your social media channels can not only help you build relationships and trust with your target audiences but also encourage brand loyalty. Tweeting back responses to customer concerns, solving customer service problems through Facebook Messenger, and replying to Instagram direct messages (DMs) are great ways to show that you care about your customers.
Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri are revolutionizing how businesses interact with customers. Through voice-activated software, you can provide personalized recommendations, give customers product information, and even help them make purchases directly through their devices.
1:1 consultations, appointment-based conversations, and video conferencing are great ways to provide customers with a unique shopping experience. Clothing brands use this technology to offer virtual styling services, and it enables companies with complex products to have experts advise on product selection.
The omnichannel approach incorporates all of the above. It involves providing customers with a seamless shopping experience, regardless of which platform they are using or what device they are on.
Businesses can better serve their customers by being present where the customer is. This is especially important for businesses with a physical presence, such as brick-and-mortar stores and sit-down restaurants.
What good does giving you this information do if we don't tell you exactly how it can improve your ecommerce KPIs?
If you're wondering, "what's in it for me?" don't worry. We've got you covered. Let's look at how conversational commerce can help boost the metrics that matter most to you.
There are a few reasons why conversational commerce does wonders for your customers' LTV:
When customers find what they need quickly, with minimal effort on their part, they are more inclined to make multiple purchases—increasing their LTV.
Chatbots and voice assistants are the perfect partners for boosting AOV. They can suggest complementary products, give customers discounts and offers during checkout, and even provide personalized recommendations based on their previous purchases.
Another reason that ecommerce managers need to care about AOV is that it's directly related to the bottom line. Customers who buy more in a single visit tend to have a higher lifetime value, and those customers are the ones you need to retain for long-term success.
When companies use direct channels (e.g., SMS, live chat, and video chat), live assistants can recommend products, find solutions to issues that would have otherwise resulted in cart abandonment, and provide additional guidance throughout the purchasing process.
It is also worth mentioning that small incremental increases to AOV can dramatically improved the overall value of a business. For some businesses, just improving AOV by 10% can make a significant difference in bottom line revenue.
It takes time to develop a loyal customer base, but conversational commerce can help kickstart that process.
When customers have an easy way to contact you with questions or comments, they can reach out for help or advice, allowing you to show them a viable solution based on their needs. That's why your visitors who have chatted with you first are 82% more likely to convert, according to Intercom data.
And when you provide this experience consistently, your chances of selling to them again are much higher.
Plus, when you use conversational SMS, you can also send follow-up messages after purchases with offers that are tailored to their interests and needs. When customers know that you are taking the time to answer their questions and provide them with personalized advice, they're more likely to purchase from you again and again.
No matter how you measure customer satisfaction, one thing is certain: it's a critical factor in the success of your business. Businesses lose about 35% of sales due to poor UX, and the result of that is a drop in customer satisfaction.
But conversions are only half the battle. To retain customers, ecommerce brands need to continuously provide a good user experience that helps them use their products and services.
For existing customers, communicating as soon as possible and on their preferred channels is critical—if they have an issue with your product, can't figure out how to use it, or need to return, exchange, or cancel an item, they should easily and quickly be able to reach you.
Making the customer service experience more convenient is key to improving customer satisfaction. Ecommerce managers can leverage conversational commerce to do just that: customers can get answers to their questions in real-time with minimal effort on their part. They don't need to wait on hold in a queue, fill out tedious forms, or navigate web pages to find the answers they need.
When you use conversational commerce, you can build customer profiles based on survey data collection. This helps create zero-party data—data that customers willingly share—which provides insights into your customer base that you wouldn't have otherwise.
These insights benefit ecommerce companies in a few ways:
Conversational commerce tools are perfect for collecting this type of data. Since each conversation with a customer is well-documented by the platform, you can easily track customer behavior and create actionable insights. Surveys and questionnaires stored in the software get representatives up to speed quickly on the customer’s needs and preferences, making for a seamless zero-party experience.
By leveraging the data collected through conversational commerce, ecommerce managers can better understand their customers’ needs and preferences and use that insight to optimize the customer experience, improve their products, uncover new product and marketing opportunities, and ultimately increase sales.
If you haven't figured it out yet, conversational commerce is kind of our thing. We help ecommerce managers and brands create seamless, personalized experiences that enhance the onsite experience while also increasing sales.
Using our platform, you can engage customers with personalized messages delivered at the right time to the right channel. You can also ask and answer any questions they have in real-time via live chat —all while collecting valuable zero-party data.
A few of our favorite features (and how they pertain to your KPIs):
We understand the importance of metrics for ecommerce managers and are dedicated to helping our customers reach their goals. That's why we do what we do.
Want to see how it works? Book a demo here.
