3 Live Chat Tips For Your Ecommerce Website

Updated: May 2021

Looking to add a simple feature to your eCommerce website that will instantly boost your customer’s experience? Add a live chat widget! When website visitors have a question or problem they expect to be able to communicate directly and quickly. This means that a plain old contact form that asks them to fill out their info and then wait for a response won’t always cut it. One of my favorite things about live chat is actually not techy at all; it’s that implementing a live chat system on your eCommerce website gives your site an interactive element and reminds visitors that real humans are on the other side of the screen to help them.

For small to medium businesses, this is also one quick and relatively inexpensive way to look and act like a major player! It shows everyone that your biz is tech-friendly, responsive, and focused on customer service. Those are all great wins! If you’re interested in some more of the psychology and stats behind why live chat is such a winning tool check out this post but read on for some tips on how to implement it successfully + a couple of recommendations on my fave live chat widgets for Squarespace.

Live Chat Tip 1

Get Everyone on the Same Page

If you have a team, make sure you go through some training so that everyone knows and understands how to chat. This means not just what to say but how to say it. You can have some answers to common questions written out in your brand’s voice but people need to be able to communicate on the fly in the same way. The goal is to make it seem like it’s not a robot chatting! You should also cover things like your expectations around response times and what options are available for resolving issues. For example, you could have some generic discount codes or links for tracking shipments at the ready so issues can get resolved quickly. Consistency is one of those things that customers can’t quite put their finger on when asked why they love a brand but will be quick to point out the second it’s missing so getting everyone on the same page is really important.

Live Chat Tip 2

Choose a Tool that Works for You First

Live chat does require integrating a third-party program and there are lots of options depending on what internal software and systems you use. For example, you could use one that connects all your chat messages to Slack or Facebook Messenger if that’s where you’re guaranteed to never miss a message. This is especially important if you’re flying solo or have a very small team of people that are busy doing things other than just monitoring your chat activity.

This may be obvious to point out but I think that while most tools need to work for customers first and you (the business owner) second, this is one that actually needs to be the other way around. Customers will use whatever tool you present to them but if it’s one that’s inconvenient for you to check and use then it’s pointless. You could also check out using a tool like Zapier to help you integrate your live chat widget into your existing business systems or semi-automate some responses when needed.

Live Chat Tip 3

It’s OK to Set Boundaries

When it comes to adding live chat one of the biggest concerns I hear about is that business owners are afraid they’ll have to be “on-call” all the time, ready to answer questions at 3 am. Here’s the thing: most chat widgets allow you to set “office hours” or simply turn the chat off if you’re going to be out of office or not able to reply right away. This is perfectly ok and normal! Use these features! I still think it’s better for an eCommerce site to have live chat turned on for 8 hours a day than not at all. The only thing you’ll want to consider is whether you’re in the same time zone or region as most of your customers. If you’re in Bali but your customers are in Cali, having chat only during your daytime hours really does nothing for your customers on the other side of the world.

Something else you could consider versus just setting an “out of office” auto-reply on your live chat is just temporarily removing the widget altogether when needed. For example, if you’ll be gone on vacation or your team is swamped with other deadlines making chatting super impossible. Having the chat icon there indicates that you’re ready and willing to talk with customers so it’s going to be a real letdown if they submit a message and never hear back. There’s no shame in turning off the chat widget if you need to and turning it back on when you’re ready.

Recommended Widgets

1. Facebook Messenger - if you’re down with Facebook, this is probably the easiest route. It’s free to use and most people already have and use FB Messenger. Another bonus is that people can chat on your site but then also pick up the chat thread on their phone which is really convenient. Check out this post with step-by-step instructions on adding FB Messenger to your Squarespace site.

2. Tidio - As far as more traditional “stand-alone” type widgets Tidio is one of my favorites because it has a lot of options and features but is still easy to use. Pricing ranges from free to $18/mo so there’s guaranteed to be a plan to fit whatever stage you’re at. Another thing I like about Tidio is that if you are interested in going the chatbot route (where you set up automated responses to common questions) this is a great tool for that on one of the paid plans. I do think that having a chatbot is still better than having nothing at all so if you’re one of the people I mentioned above who’s wary of being committed to a life of being a customer service chat agent maybe check this out?

3. LiveChat - A step up from Tidio is LiveChat which I think is best for eCommerce businesses that really want to make chat a core part of their eCommerce experience. You can also add ChatBot features to automate some aspects of the chat. LiveChat is super easy to install and comes with a 14-day free trial so you can tinker around in it before paying. The thing that sets LiveChat apart from the other tools on this list is that it pulls communications from all sorts of channels into one central hub. There are also some really cool features like a ticketing system for escalating issues that require some offline time to work on and the ability to share products right in the chat. Definitely check this one out if you're wanting to go the premium route!

Bottom Line

Adding a live chat widget can be a quick win for your business when it comes to customer service and making a great impression with customers. It’s easy to add one and becoming the norm for quick convos with online visitors. To make sure you’re successful with implementing live chat, make sure to get everyone on the same page, use a tool that works for you first, and remember that it’s ok to set boundaries on your chat if you need to!

How to Upsell & Cross-Sell on Your Online Store

Updated Feb 2022

Ok, starting off with the elephant in the room which is that sometimes talking about selling can feel kind of icky. I mean, are you or are you not envisioning a used car salesman just thinking about it?! 😂 But selling doesn’t have to feel scammy! In fact, when done right, your customers will feel like they received some personal recommendations on products or services that were right for them… AND you’ll get a little boost in average order value. Win-win. 

In this post, you’ll learn the differences between two selling mainstays: upselling and cross-selling. We’ll cover when and how to go for it and look at some tips & strategies for these sales techniques on Squarespace. Let’s go! 

Step 1: What is upselling and how is cross-selling different? 

At its most basic, upselling is selling to someone who was already going to buy from you and it only sounds silly if you think that it’s going to be easier to sell to someone new than someone who’s already added to their cart. (Hint: it’s not.)

Studies have shown that existing customers are way easier to speak to than new ones because they’ve already expressed that they like you or your products or your mission or whatever. When we look at the numbers while you have only a 5-20% chance of selling to someone new, your odds jump to 60-70% with a repeat customer. Even better, first-time buyers are 27% likely to return, but after their second or third purchase, this grows to 54%! 

All of this may lead you to believe that upselling is where it’s at but I say not really. 

Example: Let’s pretend that I’ve decided to buy Widget A from you. I’ve presumably done this because I like the product, and you’ve convinced me that it’s going to solve one of my problems, and also that you’re a legitimate business that I should give my money to. In a classic upsell scenario, you would then say something like “Hey, don’t you really like Widget B better?? It’s only X more and does all these other cool things.” 

Here’s where the wheels start to fall off: classic upselling breeds doubt. If all your copy and social proof and marketing prowess have convinced me to buy Widget A only to turn around and tell me that it’s actually an inferior product to Widget B I can only think one of two things; either 1) I can’t trust myself to suss out what’s best for me and make a decision on my own or 2) you lied to me about the awesomeness of Widget A. It feels like a bait and switch. 

The last thing we want to do when people have successfully added something to their cart is to give them any reason at all to not complete the purchase. Upselling done wrong can actually increase cart abandonment because it will force people to go back and rethink their decision to buy.

Enter: the Cross-Sell. In our pretend scenario above, an effective cross-sell would recognize that I added Widget A to my cart and suggest other, complementary items that I might also like. Cross-sells feel like a good friend making a recommendation: “Hey, you like this thing? You may also like that thing too!” 

All of this isn’t to say that upsells aren’t an effective option but there’s an art to knowing how to do them well! 

Step 2: Should you offer options before or after the sale? 

Most merchants start to think about upselling and cross-selling opportunities as a way to increase their average order value (AOV). They understand that it’s going to be easier to sell a little more to an existing customer than a lot more to a new one. But here’s the surprise twist that maybe we all didn’t see coming: upsells and cross-sells don’t have to happen before (or even at the same time) as the original purchase 🤯 

The secret is that focusing on just AOV is a short game. The AOV point-of-view says, “just sell them as much as possible right now.”

Focusing on Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is a long game. The LTV point-of-view says, “this sale is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

There’s a place for both but here are some tips: 

• Consider the value - Upsells before purchase work great for low-risk/low-value items. A good rule of thumb is to keep offers at about 25% of the original order value for the highest success rate.  

• Not everything is an offer - Displaying “related items” on a product page should be considered navigational (helping people discover new products) more than transactional (trying to sell them those things in addition to the item they are currently viewing)

• Make it worth their while - Sweeten post-purchase offers by including a discounted complementary product or free gifts with purchase. 

• Make sure things make sense - If you sell a range of products, don’t offer random upsells. They should make sense and “go with” the original purchase so that it feels personalized and not spammy. 

• The conversation doesn’t stop once an order is placed!  - Sure, you can include upsell or cross-sell offers directly after adding to the cart or after a successful checkout but don’t think that those are your only options! Continue the conversation by email. Send a note asking how they are liking their purchase after delivery and include some other things they may want to check out. Email marketing is a great way to facilitate a more personal relationship with customers and keep you top of mind.

Step 3: How to Not Be a Sleazeball 

Ok, I mean I hate to even have to include this section but you start talking sales and some people just turn into a telemarketer, you know? 🤣 Some of these practices are also so prevalent that some people think that using them must work so why not give them a go? (Hint: not everyone on the internet plays nice and some people really are out to swindle you.) 

Here’s are some good UX tips to keep in mind:

• Make it easy for people to nope out - If you’re going for a pre-purchase offer, make it super easy for people to say no. Don’t hide the “X” or “Skip/Close” options or obscure them with low contrast colors or odd placements. This will just frustrate people and could cost you the sale altogether. 

• Don’t add things to the cart automatically!!! - There’s a certain web hosting company that rhymes with DoGaddy that does this and as much as I love them, I feel like I’m playing a game of whack-a-mole every time I buy something. They have a sneaky way of adding unnecessary “add-ons” to your cart that you have to be on guard for and then manually delete. I don’t think any of you good people would ever do this but still, it deserved a call out.

• Be honest - Describe your products honestly and accurately. If a certain product is priced lower than other items in that category, explain why. If you don’t do this, your upsell product positions the first item as subpar which makes your whole offer seem suspect and may make people wonder why you would even consider selling an inferior product. Maybe the cheaper product is great for X but not for Y. Maybe you were able to source it directly from the maker. The less expensive item may be a good fit for some of your customers (otherwise you wouldn’t be selling it, right?) - so be honest about its qualities and attributes so that it’s still seen as a good option.

Step 4: Selling Apps & Tools To Check Out!

Here are some pre-purchase and in-cart upsell options for use on Squarespace:

• Squarespace Upsell Page Plugin - The best plugin that I use often on client sites and recommend is this one from Ghost Plugins. Note that it says it works on 7.0 sites but I have used it on 7.1 sites and it works just as well!

• Related Products on Squarespace - If you’re on either of the Squarespace Commerce plans, turn on Related Products! (HOME > COMMERCE > RELATED PRODUCTS). By default, the related products section uses the product's first category and then displays up to 5 products from that same category. I think this default makes the most sense but you can also change this on a product-by-product basis from the Options tab of the product editor. Check out this post for more about product categories: How to Use Product Tags & Categories on Squarespace

• eCommerce Email Marketing - Coded options aside, both the built-in Squarespace Campaigns and the Squarespace Commerce API offer ways to tag people based on what they’ve purchased. Use this data to your advantage and send automated follow-up emails that are personalized and tailored to each customer. 

Bottom Line

While you probably started reading this post with the idea of increasing your sales and average order sizes in mind, remember that it’s important to consider customer experience and relationships first and foremost. Remember, you’re going for LTV! You can pitch as many products as you want but it’s hard to turn things around once you annoy and confuse people. Consider what makes the most sense for where customers are on their journey with you and tailor solutions to them that make your recommendations feel like nothing more than a good friend telling you about something you might like because they just know you that well.

How to Create an eCommerce Brand Experience that Attracts Customers for Life

It can be hard to think about creating great experiences for our clients or customers when we often don’t see them face-to-face and their interactions with our brand are entirely digital. The good news is that guest blogger Alexandra Greiner is on the case to remind us that focusing on creating awesome brand experiences for your online business doesn’t need to be super complicated or even that expensive. Alexandra is the Founder and Creative Director of Zagga Creative, a one-stop-shop for your biggest + baddest branding dreams, and I’m so excited to share this post with you that features tons of examples you can implement right now to start attracting customers for life. Her take on creating user-friendly experiences reminds me a lot of this post of mine all about building a more empathetic brand + human-centered design. It’s just really that extra step that’s so many brands fail to take but can really pay off when done right. - Kristine

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Close your eyes and think back to the best shopping experience you’ve ever had. Was it online or in-person? My guess is, it was in person. We tend to have more memorable experiences shopping in person because it’s well, more personal. Companies can train their employees to interact with their customers in a way that aligns with their brand and what they stand for. 

For example, lululemon is all about innovation so their retail associates educate customers on all the features in each product and how it can help them in their workouts. lululemon associates are literally called “educators”. 

When we move online we lose that human to human interaction but that doesn’t mean you have to lose out on the opportunity to create a stand out brand experience.

What do I mean when I say “brand experience”? 

Look at your customer journey, list every single touch point and stage of the journey. For a physical product e-commerce site the customer journey might look something like this…

1. Alexandra comes across your profile on Instagram

2. She clicks the link in bio and is taken to the homepage of your website

3. From their she searches for the item she saw in the post that she liked

4. When she finds what she’s looking for she goes to the product page to read the details and reviews

5. She clicks ‘add to cart’ and continues to the checkout page to fill in her personal information

6. After she hits ‘purchase’ she receives an emailed receipt

7. The next day she receives the shipping notification via email

8. A few days later and her package is delivered to her door

9. She starts using the product and a few weeks later gets an email checking in to make sure everything is going smoothly and that she loves the product.

Then put on your customer hat and see each touch point from the customers perspective. What’s the experience like? 

Is it unique? Do you feel taken care of? Is there something you’re left wanting? 

Anything on that list that is less than amazing is an opportunity to elevate your brand experience and create customers for life. And I’m not talking about just slapping your logo everywhere. Be intentional about each moment. 

Now for the fun part! You get to be creative and take each of those moments from your customer journey that are less than stellar and turn them into something unforgettable. And it doesn’t have to be hard. 

Let’s say you sell digital products and you’re looking for a way to make the delivery of those products more memorable. You can surprise and delight with a digital freebie. People LOVE free stuff. Seriously. LOVE it. 

You could even do one better and have a few freebies that they get to choose from. The only thing better than a freebie is a freebie you get to pick out. My favorite supplement brand, Hum Nutrition, does this on their site every time you order. It makes me super happy and excited to order AND it gets me to try new products so I’ll buy more of their stuff. 

When you’re deciding how to elevate your brand experience, always look at it through the lens of your core values. If you’re a company that stands for reducing climate change including a freebie in the box, like let’s say a sheet of branded stickers, that increases waste would not be a good idea. On the other hand investing in dope, environmentally friendly packaging would greatly enhance the experience and convey your brand’s core values. 

If you’re still scratching your head, wondering exactly what you should do for your brand experience there’s a simple solution...ASK YOUR CUSTOMERS. There is an unlimited fountain of knowledge right at your fingertips and all you have to do is send a survey. This is also a brand experience opportunity! You’re engaging with your customers and asking their opinion and then (hopefully) you’ll take action based on the feedback. 

The ways that you can create a stand out brand experience for your e-Commerce store are endless. Here are some more ideas based on the customer journey…

Find you on social media

1. Respond to their DMs with more than just an emoji

2. Ask a question in posts so your customers can engage in the comments

3. Show some behind the scenes action

4. Make it SUPER easy to shop your products from posts

5. Create a hashtag customers can use when posting about your products so potential customers can see them IRL

Clicks a link and is taken to the homepage of your website

1. Site navigation is super clear and makes it easy to find what they’re looking for

2. Pop-up that offers them a discount on their first order so they can try your products without a big investment

3. Use eye-catching branded photos and graphics so they know exactly who you are and can imagine themselves using your products

Searches for the product they saw in an ad and liked

1. Search bar is easy to find

2. They don’t have to have the exact wording to find what they’re looking for

3. Create a quiz customers can take to direct them to the right products

Navigates to the product page

1. Upload lot’s of high quality, cohesively styled product photos so they know exactly what they’re buying

2. Add videos to the product page, showing how to use the products

3. Organize the product information in a way that is easily digestible making the most important features and info jump off the page

Clicks add to cart and checks out

1. Give back to a charity or non-profit that aligns with your core values with every purchase

2. Make it easy to enter their discount codes and payment information

3. You know that loading message when they submit their order? Why not use some branded graphics instead of the standard loading bar?

Emails

1. Make sure they get great email communication every step of the way i.e. receipt, shipping notification, delivery notification.

2. Brand your emails with your brand colors, fonts and logo

3. Make it easy for them to reach out with questions

Delivery

1. Surprise and delight with a handwritten note in their box

2. Send a check in email after they’ve been using their purchase for a few weeks to make sure everything is going well and answer any questions they may have

You don’t need to do all of them. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars. You just need to know what you stand for and what your customers want so you can be intentional in creating the best possible brand experience. 

And have fun with it for God’s sake! That energy is contagious and your customers will keep coming back and then tell all of their friends about it and they’ll also keep coming back and pretty soon you’ll have so many customers you won’t know what to do with all of them.

How to Increase Customer Lifetime Value Through Email Marketing

Any savvy business owner will tell you that it’s never smart to put all your eggs in one basket and yet so many still rely almost solely on social media in an attempt to build relationships with customers. But, as guest blogger Madeleine Murrey explains in this awesome post, email marketing is really where it’s at! If you’ve never done much work in email marketing, it can feel overwhelming at first since it definitely takes a bit of upfront work — but the payoff is so worth it! And lucky for us, Madeleine has put together some great tips and super actionable advice on how some simple email automations and strategies can seriously help build legions of loyal fans. I think you’ll find this post super helpful even if you’ve been dabbling in upping your email game for a while and are looking for ways to continue to optimize. I’m happy to share it with you! - Kristine

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When it comes to starting an email list - most business owners know the basics - welcome emails, abandon cart emails, and post-purchase thank you emails… but then put the others on the backburner. 

You’ve got the basics down, which are great low hanging fruit to monetize your audience - however, there is so much more room for growth with your email marketing! 

Email marketing is an essential part of your business and creating those VIP customers who will be fans for life. 

Yeah, social media and advertising can appear flashier, fancier and more appealing, but the best part about email marketing is you OWN your list - you are not tied to Facebook, or Instagram, or even Google. Even if something happens with your email provider, you are in full ownership of your list and have the ability to pivot quickly with email marketing. Kristine has a great post on why you shouldn’t bank on social media and why you need to build an email list here.

But that’s not the only thing - email marketing to this day still brings in more ROI than SEO, display, advertising and other forms of digital marketing. Even DMA says “For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42.”

Now that we’ve covered how much of an impact email marketing can have on the bottom line, you might be thinking “well, how do I even get started?!” 

Let’s cover the best type of email marketing - automated emails. The reason why I say this is the “best” is because this is the kind of emails that you can set up, and it automatically triggers based on users behaviors. 

Someone signs up for emails through your website? They get a welcome email series!

Someone purchases through email? Once they’ve received the item, let’s offer them another product that pairs well with the first item?

Someone makes a reservation at your restaurant? Offer them a special promotion 30 days after their purchase to get them back in. 

The opportunities are endless… and once you get this set up, it is running essentially on autopilot. 

Let’s talk about the types of automated emails you can get in place to hit that $1 spent on email marketing to $42 in return. 

Welcome Emails

I break this down into a 3 series email that way you give your audience little pieces at a time. 

Welcome email #1

This email is literally welcoming your audience to your brand. You can cover who you are, how you started, what types of emails you will be sending (tips, tricks, promotions, discounts, new product announcements, sales, etc.). I also always like to add a 10-15% off coupon to people who haven’t purchased before - this way you get them at the first touchpoint in email and while they are still very engaged. 

Welcome email #2

This email is what I like to call the “social sharing” email. Get them to like your page! If you are on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, or any other social channels - get them to follow you! This will make sure you are able to communicate with them through multiple different touch points which will help keep you connected to your audience.

Welcome email #3

In the third email, I like to promote “favorites”, which is basically any item or service that you offer that’s a favorite of your frequent purchasers, promote this here and get them to see what others like about your offerings!

Cart Abandonment Emails

This one is pretty straightforward. If a user adds an item to their cart, enters their email address, but doesn’t complete the transaction (put in their CC details) then this email will get triggered. This email can be as simple as “you forgot xxx in your cart, grab yours today before we run out of stock”. Creating that urgency, or offering a discount, can certainly increase the likelihood of the end user purchasing!

Upsell/Cross Sell Emails

Upsell/Cross Sell Emails have typically been one of the top performing emails I’ve set up for clients. These emails promote products/services that are like the other products/services that customer has bought before. Maybe your customer didn’t know the other products existed on your site, and this can help showcase all of your offerings that are specifically tailored to that customer. 

Birthday Emails

Who doesn’t like a happy birthday message? It shows you care, it shows you notice them, and creates a sense of relationship with your subscribers. Note, this one will only work if you capture your subscribers birthday in the sign up form on your website, or if you have it stored and can import that data into your email marketing software. 

VIP Emails

Everyone likes knowing if they're a VIP of a certain brand, right?! We like what we like and it’s nice knowing you might be a special customer because you love their products/services (so much so, their purchase history proves it!)

Depending on your product or service, you can define who your VIP customers are. If you sell mattresses, your VIP customers might look a little different than if you’re selling moisturizer since you only get a mattress every 10 years, or so. So take into consideration how frequently your customer needs to purchase to be the top 5-10% of your customers, and create an audience around that to acknowledge and incentivize them for being so loyal to you and your brand. This email works really well if you offer a 10-15% discount to encourage them to keep coming back for more and show your appreciation!

And, one other type of automated email as a bonus!

Bonus: Review Request Emails

While this email might not generate revenue, I wanted to include this one in if you have the ability to leave reviews for certain products/services on your website. This can really help future customers navigate through to find out what others think of what they are about to purchase. Asking for a review is a simple way to get more feedback, too!

I could go on and on with other email marketing tactics that are great for generating revenue for your business.… browse abandonment (not to be confused with cart abandonment), 1st purchase anniversary emails, winback emails, sunsetting subscribers, optimizing emails, email deliverability, and more!

However, these types of automated emails have been the staple to taking a subscriber and turning them into a first time purchaser or even celebrating a huge milestone with a valued customer through VIP automated emails. 

Summary

Get your automated emails in place as these are low-hanging fruits to increase your overall revenue!

1. Welcome Emails

2. Cart Abandonment Emails

3. Upsell/Cross Sell Emails

4. Birthday Emails

5. VIP Emails

6. Bonus: Review Request Emails

Overall, you want your customers to stick with you as long as possible, that is why the CLV metric is one of the most important metrics for your business. Strengthen your relationship with your customers through email marketing and you will soon turn many more customers to those VIP’ers. 

Simple eCommerce Marketing Ideas

With everything that goes into launching an online store, it's easy to forget about some of the little details that will help you with marketing. There are lots of great ways to get people shopping and help you stay connected with past customers. Here are a few to get you started:

Ask Shoppers to Sign Up For Your List at Checkout

An easy way to build your email list while also increasing repeat purchases and building customer loyalty is by asking shoppers to join your mailing list at checkout. This is an easy, low-pressure way to ask people if they’d like to hear from you in the future and chances are if they are buying from you once that they love your products or services and might be interested in shopping again when you launch new products or have sales or promotions. Whether you use MailChimp, Squarespace Campaigns (my favorite), or any other email marketing platform - ask shoppers if they’d like to be added to your list at checkout. 

Related Post: How to Create a Seamless Checkout Experience

Add Upsells & Cross-Sells

One of the easiest ways you can get people to buy more is by simply asking them. (Ha! This isn’t really a mind-blowing strategy, is it?) But really, adding upsell and cross-sell opportunities for your products and services are a great way to let site visitors discover more of what you offer. Even if they don’t go for it this time, it’s a good marketing opportunity to just remind them of other things you sell or do. It may be something they decide to purchase next time or something they tell their friends about now that they know you offer it. (Hint: Before you can do this, you really need to make sure have all your product categories figured out!)

Related Post: How to Upsell & Cross-Sell on Your Online Store

Send an Automated Email to Follow Up

Go beyond the standard order confirmation email and send a customized message automatically to your customers or clients. Automated commerce emails that are linked to your products or services can be a great way to follow up with additional information, check to see if customers enjoyed their purchase, or ask them to share about their experience on social media. So many options!

Related Post: How to Set Up Product-Specific Email Automations with Squarespace Campaigns

Add Live Chat

Live chat is proven to be one of the most impactful ways to connect with potential customers and clients before, during, and after they purchase from you. How do you use this as part of your marketing strategy? Easy! Every interaction with a real person (you or a member of your team) is an opportunity for you to help, engage and provide support and build strong brand affinity.

Related Post: 3 Live Chat Tips for Your eCommerce Website

Inject Your Branding Wherever Possible

The standard order fulfilled, order confirmed, and order refunded emails are functional enough that if you don’t want to write anything custom you’d certainly be just fine. However, these are all great opportunities to show off some of your unique brand personality and voice! Make the writing sound like you and match the rest of your site, make sure your logo or branding is incorporated, and invite customers to have a conversation with you if you’d like. If you ship physical products, make sure things arrive in a branded box or with some other brand material. A little personalization goes a long way in building loyal customers!

Related Post: A Minimalist’s Guide to Branding

The Key To A Strong Brand: Communicating Consistently

Have you ever been texting with a friend and said something totally sarcastic… and that friend totally took it the wrong way because sometimes it’s just really hard to convey emotion via text message? Managing your brand voice online can sometimes be just like that. 

You say one thing. Your dear visitors read something else entirely. The outcome is at best confusion. At worst, controversy.

Communicating with our potential customers and clients digitally poses so many potentially similar opportunities for things to be misconstrued, misunderstood, or just plain missed out on. It doesn’t have to be, though! Understanding a few basics on how we communicate with one another as humans can help you craft more authentic user experiences and (more importantly) a more consistent brand. 

Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of Communication

To better understand how to communicate with our website visitors, blog readers, and potential clients/customers, I think it might first be helpful to understand the Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of Communication. Now, way back in the day, I majored in Communication and spent years studying how we can better understand one another as humans, so this topic is my jam. Just being more mindful of this exchange can help build awareness, empathy, and opportunities for a deeper connection - all great things for us as people and as brands!

The SMCR Model is the simplest breakdown of how we communicate and is used as the basis for most other communication models. 

Breaking It Down

Think of my scenario with my poor friend I offended earlier via text message. In that scenario, here’s how the communication process between us breaks down. Note that all of this happens almost instantaneously, even though it seems all drawn out here. 

Sender: Me

Encode: My intended message (the idea I have in my brain) is translated into words (and probably emojis 🤓) that I hope my friend can understand. As I write my text message, I take all my emotions, past experiences, culture, language, and thoughts about the world into account to try to convey my message. The process of translating my ideas into words and symbols is called encoding.

Transmission (Channel): Text Message 

Decode: My friend receives my message and interprets it based on all their emotions, past experiences, culture, language, and thoughts about the world. Their interpretations of my words + emojis result in what they understand the message to be about. The process of translating the sender’s words and symbols into thought is called decoding.

Receiver: My Friend

Other Factors

Noise: In this model, noise is all of the external factors that may influence the encoding, decoding, or transmission of the message. It could be that I wrote my text message in a hurry while trying to get out the door or that my friend read it in the middle of a busy workday with lots of other emails and texts already stressing her out. Maybe my phone autocorrects a crucial word into something it isn’t supposed to be! Factoring noise into the equation is HUGE. 

Feedback: Feedback is what my friend either consciously or unconsciously sends back to me in response to my message. Maybe it is a single tear emoji 😢. Perhaps it’s a long reply or no reply at all. This starts a feedback loop that can either positively or negatively impact our relationship. It’s either an opportunity to ask for clarity and seek deeper understanding or remain divided because we let all the encoding, decoding, and noise get the better of us.

{{ Intermission: Thank you for coming to my TED talk on the importance of communication. }}

What does this mean for our brands?

Well, just like in that childhood game of telephone where you whisper a message into someone’s ear, and they whisper it to someone else, and down the line, the message goes… when we attempt to communicate, we all just hope that everyone is picking up what we’re putting down. The real truth is that we know that the end message in the game of telephone usually only vaguely resembles the original intent. This is true whether via text message like in the example above, or in person, via social media… or even on a website.

Reading up to this point, you may think that the rest of this post is going to be about copywriting, but (surprise!) it’s really about branding. Why? Because it’s your branding that establishes your voice, and all of the visual shorthand (logos, submarks, icons, patterns, fonts, and colors) that help convey intent without needing to say anything at all 🤯

Building a Strong Brand Reputation

The channel that we’re all here to learn about is your website! Noting that this is important because your website is (typically) the most significant asset you own and, therefore, the most potentially important place for you to establish consistency. Consistency is vital because it’s what your reputation is built on.

Your website is vital to your brand because:

• You can establish your brand, voice, and messaging on your own turf

• You can control the content and message about your business

• You can measure and understand how your content is engaged and interacted with

• No algorithms are dictating what’s seen or not

• There are no ads or other elements to distract users

• You can establish yourself as a thought leader and expert in your industry

• You can build a strong reputation that can speak for itself

Fringe Benefits

Think about that last point: you can build a strong reputation that can speak for itself. Think about how that affects our communication model from above. If your brand has established a strong brand reputation, think of how this might impact your customers:

• They may be more forgiving of a mistake or snafu 

• They are likely to be more loyal because they feel seen and understood

• They may be more willing to refer you to their friends

• They may spend more time on your site engaging with content

• They are likely to become long-time, repeat customers 

If all of these things sound great to you, read on! 

Creating a Consistent Brand Experience Online

Ok, down to the nitty-gritty. Hopefully, I’ve made my case for why it’s not just what you say that matters but how and where and why. Here are some ways to put this into action within the framework of the Sender/Receiver model above. Consistency in all of these aspects goes a long way towards improving your overall customer experience.

• Establish Brand Guidelines - Establish firm brand guidelines that you use to gauge whether new communications or “on brand” or not. This can be for everything from brand voice to colors, fonts, and even design motifs. 

• Stay Focused - Just being mindful of your intention and thinking ahead to how it will be interpreted (decoded) can be a great system of checks and balances. This works for both written and visual communication. (It’s too easy to let “light blue” become “baby blue” become “sky blue,” and before you know it, you’ve diluted your brand by being all over the place.)

• Think About Your Customer - Consider your user (receiver) in all things; do they come from a different cultural background than you? Are specific colors likely to mean something different to them than to you? Do they understand humor and sarcasm in the same way as you, or are they likely to prefer a more toned-down approach? Avoid internal jargon or industry lingo that they aren’t likely to understand.

• Get Organized - Create organized and intuitive navigation and ways to move around your website. This is a subtle way of building trust with your users. If your site is hard to interact with, visitors are likely to become frustrated and disinterested. Examples of how to improve this can be things like keeping your forms short, making clear calls-to-action, tagging your content or organizing it by category, and making sure key content is never more than a click or two deep.  

• Go the Extra Mile - Make sure that you extend your brand beyond your website to the communications and interactions that happen outside of it. This can be making sure that your customer service emails are visually and linguistically consistent, that your live chat agents are trained in brand voice, and even that your packaging is well branded. You could also pay attention to your other business systems: does your invoice have your logo? Do your payment reminders use your brand voice? 

Reducing Noise

It’s difficult to control the environmental situations our website visitors are in when they choose to visit our sites, but being aware of the potential noise surrounding your messaging can be so helpful. Think about your target demographic. Are they mostly single moms? They likely have kids in the background and not much time to research what you’re selling. Depending on what products or services you offer, maybe it means they mostly view your site on their iPad late at night. Knowing this could help you know that you need to design your website to work well displayed on a tablet in dark mode. 

If your target demographic is busy professionals in your industry, you could do your best to fight through the noise by offering to send them a once-monthly digest of great articles or tips. The keys here would be to send something consistently (so they can count on you) and to position it as a valuable way for them to save time, not having to search out all that info for themselves. You get the idea.

Be Open to Feedback

Last but not least, one of the most important elements of our communication model is feedback. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to pick up on the feedback that your customers and website visitors are sending you. One easy way to do this is just by monitoring and tracking your site analytics, but you can also just listen to what people are saying. Customers will tell you what they need. Do you regularly get the same questions over and over? Maybe it’s time to add a FAQ page to your site. Have negative reviews increased lately? Maybe time to check in with your customer service team to see what’s going on. 

Treat your website as a dynamic resource, updating it as often as you need to. Using feedback from visitors, you can continuously improve how you communicate your unique brand to the world. 

5 Trending Benefits of Live Chat

I’m not one to jump on just any, average, over-hyped fad because it’s trending. I’m more the type of person that lets a new restaurant be open for a few months before giving it a try. Let them work the bugs out on everyone else, you know? When it comes to websites, web design, and eCommerce I do try to be a bit more on the cutting edge of what’s new and am willing to jump in as an early adopter of something looks promising. So, though the concept of conversational commerce isn’t necessarily new, I can definitely tell you that it’s a wave that you’re going to want to jump on ASAP if you haven’t incorporated it into your overall business strategy yet.

What is Conversational Commerce? Simply put, it’s using live chat or messaging to build relationships with your eCommerce customers. This can happen at any stage of the relationship: before, during, or after the purchase.

Live Chat Trends

Before we dig deeper, I thought it would be helpful to outline just how customers are using and experiencing live chat or messaging currently:

• 61% of customers say they have messaged with a business in the last 3 months

• 69% expect messaging to enable better customer experiences

• 61% of customers expect to use messaging more to make a purchase in the future

These trends make sense when you think about them. Chat and messaging are where people spend most of their time talking with friends and family so it’s natural to want to talk to a business in the same way. Overall, people have very positive associations with live chat vs. other support methods such as making a phone call or submitting a ticket/email. They know that they are getting a better experience and a more authentic, honest interaction with your brand. This builds trust and loyalty.

Looking ahead, many people are looking to move their entire commerce experience (getting product info, accessing a shopping cart link & checking out) all completely within the messaging conversation.

1. Live Chat Helps Meet Customer Expectations

Conversational commerce isn’t just a buzzword for big retailers like Amazon and Walmart. The technology is there for small businesses to take advantage of it and not only that - customers are demanding live chat as part of their online shopping experience.

What is the most satisfying way to communicate with a business?

Live chat really shouldn’t be a “wish list” integration on your web design list anymore; it’s become a baseline requirement for anyone and everyone in the eCommerce game whether you sell physical, digital, service-based, or subscription-based products. Even those offering online courses, memberships, and digital downloads should be thinking of how to incorporate live chat into their website experience. When asked, 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer - even for small retailers they shop with!

2. Live Chat Builds Trust With Buyers

One of the biggest objections to adding live chat - especially from small business owners - is the worry that it will suddenly take up all their time responding to live questions from online shoppers. To this I say 1) good problem to have if it was true and 2) in reality out of every several hundred visitors you may only get one who actually chats.

Now, you may be thinking that if every visitor isn’t going to chat, why even bother adding the feature? Here’s why: a staggering 90% of customers said that just seeing a live chat button reassures them that they could get help if they need it and gives them confidence even if they don’t actually chat. (!!!) So, basically just setting up the widget itself is worth it even if it never gets used! Going farther, 77% of customers surveyed actually said they won’t make a purchase on a site if there’s no live chat option available which even furthers reinforces the point.

What all of this says is that just the mere presence of a live chat option helps build trust with visitors and the absence of one may mean you’re missing out on sales for no other measurable reason. Bonus: 63% of consumers said they are more likely to come back to a website that offers live chat. Now that’s brand loyalty!

“90% of customers said that just seeing a live chat button reassures them that they could get help if they need it and gives them confidence even if they don’t actually chat. ”

3. Live Chat Increases Sales & Conversions

I think the biggest mindset shift I could offer my clients when it comes to their eCommerce experiences is to start thinking of it as if they were running a brick-and-mortar location. If you sell physical products, envision the physical retail space your store would take up if it existed. If you’re a service provider, do you have a comfortable office to meet with clients? Are you meeting over coffee in a lively coffee shop? What would it feel like in person?

You likely imagined having a friendly, interactive, and personal exchange with your customers or clients. This is the heart of conversational commerce: building a connection with another human.

If someone walked into your location in real life would you ignore them? Let them wander around confused and try to figure things out on their own? Of course not! You’d welcome them warmly, ask how their day is, get to know them as a person so that you could help them find what they’re looking for. Just because you’ve taken your business online doesn’t mean you can abandon your responsibility to take care of your customers personally.

The correlation between live chat and sales & conversions is clear. 57% of customers abandon their purchase if they cant’ get their questions answered quickly.

Customers who chat with a brand are 3x more likely to make a purchase.

Customers who chat with a brand have a 10-15% higher average order value

Customers who chat with a brand are 50% less likely to make a return

Starting to think about commerce from a conversational standpoint has so many benefits. You can reduce abandoned carts, increase the likelihood of visitors making a purchase, increase average order value and decrease returns. Just by adding live chat!

4. Live Chat Boosts ROI on Paid Ad Campaigns

This benefit is short and sweet but good! If you’re running paid ad campaigns on Google or Facebook, you need to have live chat on your website! Since we know that having it can help convert more visitors to buyers, why would you pay to send people to your site without it? Adding live chat basically makes all of your ads more powerful by making sure that you’re actually getting the most bang for your buck on your ad spend.

5. Live Chat Helps You Understand Your Customers & Get Direct Product Feedback

Has anyone ever said they love Google analytics? No. No one says that. It’s cold and impersonal and sure it’s fun to see that someone visited your site from their iPad in Finland but what does this really tell you? Not a lot. Site analytics are telling you the who and what but if you listen closely your customers will tell you the why.

Customers and clients are seeking authentic interaction which means listening to them, sharing your knowledge, making recommendations based on what they’re telling you. Through the conversations you have with your site visitors, you can learn more about them than Google analytics will ever tell you.

Are they concerned about how earth-friendly your packaging is? Are they wondering about the safety of your products for their kids? Are they interested in which services go best together? Through listening to your customers you can find out how to target messages to your core demographic. Through conversation, you can help them make the right product or service choices, send them a coupon for their loyalty or help them track a package.

You can also start to see patterns in the types of questions that are asked and use that to inform future content creation or website updates. If people are always asking you whether upgrading to a certain product/service is worth it, maybe add a comparison chart to those pages. If people seem to wonder a lot about sizes, product specs, shipping questions, or other basic info it’s probably a sign that this info needs to be added to your site on either product info pages or a FAQ page.

Chances are if 10 people have asked, 100 more aren’t and are leaving your site without making a purchase because they couldn’t quickly find the answers to their questions.

How to Implement:

Here are some ways you can use live chat at each stage in a customer’s journey. You may also find this post with tips for adding live chat to your website helpful!

Pre-Purchase

During the deliberation stage you can help personalize & enhance a customer’s shopping experience, or just start building the customer relationship.

Purchase

During the purchasing process, the goal is to have a conversation with your customer, removing all friction and (if possible) helping them with their transaction directly within the conversation.

Post-Purchase

After a purchase, you can provide customer support and nurture the customer relationship. This builds loyalty and increases the customer lifetime value.

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Here’s the TL;DR if you skipped to the bottom!

Live Chat Can Be Your Key Competitive Advantage

If you’re a small business owner here’s where you're not going to be able to beat the big guys: purchasing power, shipping rates, turnaround time, ad spend…

And here’s where you can win: you can be personal. You can be authentic. You can use tools and technology available to you to build relationships and loyalty. Live chat can be your competitive advantage. No one knows your products or services as you do and getting to speak 1:1 with someone with that level of knowledge isn’t happening over at Amazon or Walmart. There’s a tremendous advantage here to increase the value of the customer over time. Just by having a conversation.