Improving Online Engagement

The recession has hit the retail industry hard and so now more than ever retailers need to engage with their customers and capture them online.
Retailers need to give customers value, good customer service and a feel good experience when shopping.  Forecasters say that nearly 7,000 retailers will go bankrupt in 2010 so online sales are going to become a vital part of survival.

According to research carried out by ecommerce software specialists Parker Software the total retail market is predicted to shrink by 0.6% this year but the online market will grow by 13% with more people spending on the web.  Research also shows that UK shopper will spend £10 more online per visit than they were a year ago.

With the advent of the recession, shopping habits are changing, people are turning to the web to search out bargains on goods across all se<pctors so retailers have to adopt strategies to engage with customers when they reach their site or they may just browse and leave without purchasing.
Success will depend on a company’s ability to create a good and enjoyable shopping experience and one that offers consistent and good customer service.  So if someone visits a high street store and experiences good customer service then customers will expect the same online.
As such, retailers and more increasingly general businesses that operate via the web will need to become more adept at using technology and implementing innovations on their web sites.

One such method more and more businesses are adopting is the use of live chat.   Live chat extends communication opportunities between buyer and seller while maximising the customer's overall satisfaction with their website experience.

For most of its history, online shopping has been a largely anonymous process, with businesses content to wait for browsers to initiate an interaction. But now, more businesses are adding technology like live chat that allows them to step up and make the first move and offer a virtual 'Can I help you?' idea.  The idea is to add that personal touch, that customer service extra and introduce a human factor into virtual shopping.

For example on any Saturday in any high street shop you can hear shop assistants greet customers. 'Good morning. Can I help you?'  'Just looking,' is the usual reply from the customer.  The shop assistant may then go further and ask if they can give them any ideas...
The shop assistant is on the way to turning the customer's visit into a profitable one for the shop and until now, it has been missing from e-shopping. It makes the difference between visitors and buyers.

Online visitors who are 'just browsing' may love the impersonality of e-shopping and the free information they get there, but it means lost sales for businesses. Online shoppers who are serious about buying, on the other hand, may be frustrated by FAQs that answer the questions that vendors wanted shoppers to ask, rather than the question that they have. Email interchanges are often slow, making customers lose interest or buy the same item elsewhere.
Now, however, online businesses can reach their customers online while they shop, using live chat. A live chat customer service person can greet the customer while they are browsing the web site, find out what the customer likes, and offer them the item they could not possibly resist.

Online businesses who have added the WhosOn live chat system report a huge increase in sales per customer says Ian Rowley, Business Development Director at Parker Software. 'With live chat, people come to look, but stay to buy. Others, who came to buy but couldn't get answers to their questions or couldn't find items they were looking for previously, now become buyers.

What matters is not so much how many people come to a website, but how many people actually buy something. Research shows that only about 2% or less of e-commerce web visitors buy anything in a session. Only about half of all web shoppers who put an item into a web shopping basket actually buy that item. That represents a tremendous waste of advertising expenditure that could be recovered with the aid of live chat.

We believe that the solution is to make online web sites more proactive and interactive, allowing businesses to reach out to their customers through the web and add the personal touch, using live chat to provide live help and support. Prospective customers should not be daunted by the task of searching a few thousand web pages to find what they need. They should be getting live help from support personnel who can solve their problems and provide the personal touch.'

Maximising the online-customer experience is a priority for ecommerce businesses because, by satisfying the customer's goals, they can satisfy their goals for more sales. Live chat, whether through its common instant messaging platform or its more advanced customer analytical capabilities, creates key opportunities for ecommerce businesses.

Creating value through live-chat technology requires strategic planning and skilled implementation. It is still misused and underutilized by many businesses with an online presence and most think it is just the domain for retailers.

Live-chat technology and customer analytics though is relevant for any business that wants to capture customers on the internet.

As with all website conversion strategies, consider testing live chat and measuring its effectiveness for reducing abandonment and maximising customers' online experience. Coupled with other effective conversion strategies, live chat may provide a boost to sales and strengthen a customer's website experience.

For a free trial of Parker Software's WhosOn software please visit http://www.whoson.com