Live Chat Strategy to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment on Your E-commerce Site

How to reduce shopping cart abandonment with live chat
How to reduce shopping cart abandonment with live chat

According to http://baymard.com statistics  67.44% of online shopping carts on average are abandoned by users. While this figure is very shocking, if we look at it from the bright side it is actually a large opportunity to convert more leads and increase sales by the same percentage without attracting additional traffic to your website.

Wouldn’t you enjoy seeing your sales going up by 67.44%, especially in anticipation of the coming holiday season?

There are different tools and methods which can help you deal with the problem of abandoned shopping carts, but a good way to start is to understand what factors trigger it in the first place.

4 Major reasons for shopping cart abandonment

www.statista.com have put up a nice chart showing top most common reasons why online shoppers leave without paying.

All these reasons can be classified into four major categories.

1. Economic issues: unsuitable delivery options, price (presented with unexpected costs, found a better price elsewhere, overall price too expensive).

2. Operational issues, or lack of website optimization: complicated navigation, process taking too long, excessive security checks, price displayed in a foreign currency.

3. Technical issues: website crash, website time out, declined payment.

4. The customer is undecided on the product or on the company: was just browsing, decided against buying, had concerns about security.

4 Ways placing live chat on your website helps you address shopping cart abandonment

  1. By prominent placement of the live chat button inside the shopping cart and answering the customer’s questions timely you prevent them from discarding their purchase. Most customers are not willing to wait and if they cannot quickly find the necessary information or solution to their problem, they will simply leave.
  2. Using proactive chat you can directly reach out to customers who are facing technical issues or are stuck in their shopping cart undecided and help them to solve the problem or encourage their purchasing decision with additional information or incentives.
  3. By making yourself available via live chat you show to your customers that you are a real entity, build trust with them and establish your credibility.
  4. Live chat’s real-time visitor monitoring and co-browser features enable you track your mistakes. You can see the errors that the customer receives during the checkout process and fix any possible issues with your website.

How to handle proactive chat to minimize shopping cart abandonment

  • Carefully consider your invitation message. How you greet the user and what information you include is very important. Try to personalize the message depending on the situation. For example, if you see the customer is facing a technical issue, you could send them a message like the following:

Hi! My name is [Your Name]. I could see there was some problem with completing your order. Would you like me to step in and help you?

If the customer is viewing a product page, including the product name in the invitation message makes it sound more personal and raises the chances of it being accepted. Here is an example:

Hello! My name is [Your Name]. I see you are interested in [Product Name]. Do you have any questions about it you would like me to answer for you?

  • Be specific, answer the customer questions upfront. Avoid sounding too salesy or pushy. You are there to help them, and if you stay in this mind frame, the customer will feel and appreciate it.
  • Try to personalize the customer buying experience by offering them inexpensive and easy to upsell products complementary to the product or service they are interested in and which will make it more custom and special.
  • Linking users to customer reviews, ratings and testimonials can greatly increase conversion rates. Mention service plans or any other benefits that go together with the product.
  • Reassure customers of their choice by linking them to product warranties, shipping costs, return policies. Offer discounts or free shipping if you can.

More than anything else, don’t set your procedures in stone. Try different approaches with proactive chat and see what works best for your website and with your type of customers. The main thing to remember is, the users don’t care about your sales rates, they want to enjoy their shopping experience. If you watch their interests, help those who need help and educate those who need information – this is your shortest way to reduced shopping cart abandonment and increased sales.

Provide Support is a leading software provider in customer service, offering live chat and real-time visitor monitoring tool for websites. Aiming for excellence in customer service. www.providesupport.com

Maria Lebed

3 comments

  1. This is a great strategy. I’ve got an ecomm site as a sidegig and am always looking for ways to squeeze a little more out of it. Thank you!

  2. The 4 live chat ways were really helpful. We may use some of that on live chat to help ours. Anything to help improve it! Glad I stumbled across this.

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