November 28, 2022
Need to improve the customer experience of your website? Live chat is the perfect tool to centre the CX for your existing and potential customers.
We live in a digital-first world, where websites have become the shop front. And because of this, the customer experience (CX) of your website is more important than ever. To keep this analogy going, in the same way that a shop floor would be well-thought out, so does the architecture of a website.
There are a number of elements that need serious consideration when designing an online experience your customers will enjoy, trust and ultimately lead to the conversions needed to meet your marketing goals. One of those elements is live chat.
But first.
Why is customer experience important?
Without customers, it is very hard for a business to thrive. Impossible, in fact,
Every touchpoint a customer has with a business builds out their customer experience. This can include browsing social media, a store visit, an email open, phone call, making a purchase and more.
When it comes to making a purchase, 81% of shoppers will research online first. This makes your website vital in driving revenue, and on the flip side it means a bad customer experience can be detrimental.
Here are the key website elements that need to be well considered when building out your online CX, and how live chat adds value in centering your customers’ experience.
1. Content – what information do your customers want?
When building your pages and creating your messaging you need to write for your customer, not what you think they want to hear. Understanding who your audience is will be fundamental for this.
Here are a few questions to consider when creating your typical web pages
- Product/Service pages: Why is your product/service the best option for your customer? What problem does your product/service solve for your customer?
- About Us page: Why should your customer trust you? What do you stand for?
- Contact page: How do your customers want to connect? Would chat be a better option?
Did you know that more than 50% website visitors prefer chat over any other form of communication?
- Blog pages: What information would make your customers’ lives better? What questions do they need answers for?
But what happens when your customers can’t find the content they are after or the CTA isn’t quite right for their situation? Not only do website visitors prefer live chat but it’s the perfect tool to fill this need, especially when manned by a real-life, living human who can answer questions and be the CTA.
2. Navigation – can your customers find what they are looking for?
The best content, messaging and call-to-actions (CTA) are wasted if they can’t be found. Well-thought-out architecture and navigation is an essential and vital part of any website. Does your site navigation make it easy for your customers to find what they want within three clicks? Are you moving visitors through the customer journey, enabling them to convert?
Whilst you should always design your navigation and UX well, a live chat tool can make this process incredibly smooth by guiding people around your site based on their unique and specific needs. Rather than hoping your traffic selects your CTA and progresses along your marketing funnel, the chat can ask ‘what help do you need?. It’s a proactive marketing tool that ensures your website always maximises conversion potential.
3. Forms – essential, but do all visitors want to use forms?
Enquiry forms can be sales teams’ gold for any online-to-offline customer journey. And if they are a website’s central call-to-action, ensuring that they work as effectively as possible is imperative.
But there are two hurdles to overcome
- Response time
- Form error
When it comes to response time, we live in an instant world with many expecting to be able to get answers instantly. This is where live chat is the perfect solution to address those who prefer to chat in real time.
And if you haven’t guessed it, form errors can also be addressed through live chat. With a chat widget set to fire when a form error occurs, visitors are re-engaged and satisfied.
4. Pop-ups – is this the best tactic?
Let’s be honest. We all have a love-hate relationship with pop-ups. These can be incredibly handy tools, especially for eCommerce sites, to re-engage traffic looking to leave your site but from a user perspective, when done badly these are annoying!
By using live chat throughout your website experience, instead of relying on a final offer to bring customers back, you can engage your visitors throughout their journey before they get to the point of leaving. Research shows 38% of visitors make their purchase based on their chat experience.
But if you do need to re-engage a visitor who looks likely to leave, chat can help here too.
5. Live chat – it’s expected
Instead of looking at chat as a nice-to-have feature on your website, consider it a vital tool to not only support your goals but provide your prospective customers with the medium they expect, and prefer.
75% of people prefer chat as their form of communication.
6. Availability – are your team available 24/7?
Not only is chat preferred but customers expect businesses to be available 24/7. Chat can be an easy fix here, the biggest hurdle being the cost to have staff available 24/7.
That’s where a chat bot or a managed solution (like SmartChat) can be very useful. Each option comes with pros and cons. The right choice will depend on the business model, the products/services being sold and customer base.
As the modern shop front, your website needs to be fine tuned to center the customer experience. The way your website is built should create an online experience that customers will enjoy, push them forward, build brand trust and ultimately result in increased revenue.
Live chat is a perfect tool to keep your customers’ needs front and center, allowing them to engage in conversation whenever they choose, and get the answers they need when and how they want them.
