6 Ecommerce Chatbots Trends for 2018
Ecommerce chatbots have been making a lot of buzz in the marketing and IT industry ever since Facebook introduced its Messenger platform with the feature last year. Owing to the advances in AI and integrated NLP algorithms, chatbots are contributing immensely to the growth in the ecommerce industry by automating the communication and purchasing processes and bringing more sales by opening a new revenue stream.
Gartner predicts that more than half of all enterprises will use chatbots by 2020, and given their popularity across banking and healthcare industries it is not hard to see why. Many retailers have also jumped on the bandwagon and have begun reaping considerable success with the deployment of chatbots to streamline and optimize their marketing and sales funnels.
But what does this mean for ecommerce chatbots in particular? In this post, we look at 6 chatbot trends for the ecommerce industry you should know about.
Mobile Messengers Are On The Rise
Mobile messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, QQ Mobile, and WeChat, are gaining more users by the day. Statista reports that both Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp boast 1 billion active users, while QQ Mobile and WeChat fall with under 900 million users each.
With this rapid growth in mobile messaging user base, it gives online retailers and stores considerable opportunities to leverage chatbots to meet their marketing and sales objectives. Chatbots will be able to reach a larger group of customers to answer product-related queries and improve customer acquisition and customer retention goals much more efficiently.
Customers Show Greater Preference For Mobile Messaging
Mobile messaging apps may be dominating in terms of active base users, but how does this growth trend compare to other channels? In truth, customers are showing greater preference for mobile messaging in contrast to social media and apps.
In the UK, research from Mobilesquared between 2013 and 2017 shows that mobile messaging had the greatest adoption of 20% CAGR. Apps and social media, on the other hand, had 16% and 8% CAGR respectively.
The staggering growth in preference for mobile messaging may mean the use in chatbots will rise at the expense of email marketing. Customers are signed into Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp for several hours at end, and engaging with them through mobile messaging apps is expected to be far more effective in comparison to social media and email.
Number Of App Users Are Declining
Although more and more users are surfing the net from their mobile devices, the same cannot be said of mobile app usage. It has often become the norm for ecommerce websites to develop apps to target and direct customer behaviors for marketing purposes, owing to mobile app usage serving as a crucial success metric.
However, things do not look very promising as many app developers have shifted the focus from user acquisition to user retention. According to Localytics, the churn rate for any mobile app is 90 days, and with the average user having roughly 30 apps on the phone, ecommerce websites are in for a gloomy future.
A possible reason for this decline is the weariness associated with searching, downloading, and installing an app, along with getting familiar with the user interface to make a single purchase. Ecommerce chatbots, in comparison, are far quicker in understanding customer intent and in directing queries to making online orders for customers.
Chatbots Can Collect Customer Insights
Marketers will have far better insights to customers thanks to chatbots. Having a repository of collected customer questions, most frequent purchases, canceled orders, and feedbacks will serve as an invaluable compass for marketers to assess every stage of the sales and marketing funnels.
By asking questions, chatbots can help pinpoint the specific needs of a customer segment or target market and help marketers adjust their strategies and evaluate their campaigns without much delay. This means that along with conventional analytics tools, ecommerce chatbots will be a pivotal component for gauging customer responses.
Chatbots Will Become Far Cheaper To Develop
Ecommerce chatbots, compared to mobile apps, are cheaper to develop. Due to having a simple, single user-interface, ecommerce chatbots are designed mainly for processing automated responses based on certain keywords. For this reason, it does not take a lot of time and effort to develop one.
In fact, costs are expected to fall even further as development tools become increasingly available. Tech giants, including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have made various development frameworks and tools accessible to users that make use of the most innovative AI and speech recognition technologies.
If this trend continues, users will be able to develop ecommerce chatbots without requiring any prior programming knowledge, which will diminish demand for mobile app development.
Chatbots Will Have the Ability To Negotiate
This may sound amusing, but chatbots will also have the capacity to give fuller responses to customers and convincing them of specific answers. Through continual improvements in context-specific algorithms, chatbots will possess the capability to detect and distinguish circumstances and situations and reason with customers to develop closer relationships.
For online store owners who have to answer hours’ worth of calls every month related to price negotiations, this is a huge relief. With the necessary upgrades, ecommerce chatbots can be left to do all the bidding and negotiating.
What Ecommerce Chatbots Mean For Your Online Store
Ecommerce chatbots are predicted to be a key component driving ecommerce sales. The quicker brands adopt chatbots, the quicker they will be able to gain a competitive edge over rivals.
Through advances in speech recognition and NLP capabilities, chatbots will not only be incredibly fast, but also provide a much natural means of engagement for visitors. While it is too early to say on whether it is a game-changer, one thing is certain: ecommerce chatbots are necessary for gaining a competitive advantage.
