Does Your App & Mobile Website Need Conversational Assistant?

Robinder Gauba
MAKEROBOS
Published in
6 min readNov 4, 2018

Chatbots are breaking the bounds of human to computer interaction. If you don’t believe us, continue reading the story till the end. A computer program conversing like a human being means a lot for a business. A conversational UI offers the freedom of interacting with the computer just like a human does.

It is considered as a paradigm shift over the earlier forms of communications which were based on syntax-specific commands or getting info by clicking icons. And today as everything is becoming mobile centric, so deploying a conversational chatbot on a mobile website can be a real game changer. Why this has become the need of the hour, let’s find out in this story.

Why Companies Must Have Chatbots For Apps & Mobile Websites?

The ultimate goal of any business is to please the customer and derive maximum benefits. Just recall the days when customers were assisted by assistants at shops, even today they can be found helping customers. This is exactly what the modern day chatbots for mobile and websites does.

People are already used to mobile interface and brands just need to take this a step further. Intelligent chatbots works across the platform be it is mobile or desktop, brands just need to deploy them on the websites for seamless workflow.

According to Tractica, it is expected that unique active consumer reach of using Virtual Digital Assistants (VDA) will expand to 1.8 billion by 2021 from 390 million in 2015.

According to Juniper research, the cost saving of businesses when it comes to automating tasks such as customer service, will be US$ 8 billion per year by 2022. This was mere US$ 20 million in the year 2017.

What Are The Downsides Of Mobile Apps And Websites User Interface?

Over the years, the use of mobiles has increased exponentially. Every other brand is launching its own mobile app or web app that has really created many complexities in terms of user interface. Below are some of the disadvantages of browsing information on a mobile.

♚ | Mobile websites are often crowded with too many CTAs

Not every mobile website is optimized for call to action and set aside the amount of frustration one can experience on non-mobile version of a website. This is especially important as number of mobile users have surpassed the number of desktop users today.

Let’s see this problem from a different perspective that you have a closet which is almost always chock full of outfit options from past shopping trips and you just need one dress to make your day but you ended up with decision fatigue trap.

This is the same phenomenon your visitors are experiencing on your mobile website, by overloading their brains with too many possibilities. Truthfully & scientifically too more conversions happened when shoppers had fewer options when making a choice.

♛ | Poor Navigation

Interacting with a website on the smartphone is one of the most difficult aspects of browsing. Especially, when it comes to input forms, it takes much longer to scroll through, select the individual fields and enter the text. Quality navigation helps the user complete the required task which is unfortunately lacking in most websites.

♜ | Costly process to keep changing pages

Website maintenance is not a piece of cake, especially website with hundreds of dynamic pages. Mobile websites need separate maintenance across various platforms. This could be an expensive affair and need a dedicated team to maintain all the pages. So adding new content is always a hassle as for every new service or piece of information you have to design the entire page.

♝ | Lack of dynamism

When it comes to adapting websites for different devices including smartphones and tablets, it requires different technical know-how that could be cumbersome. It means technically desktop and mobile user gets different content or design from the same URL which is absolutely time and money consuming, especially for the small scale businesses.

How Conversational Web Messengers Can Prove To Be Godsend? 🙌

Every one of us knows the value of user experience these days. Designers and developers continuously try various approaches to make human-to-computer interaction more efficient. Chatbots or conversational web messenger is one such major approach which is all rage these days. Their major goal is to reduce friction and make the user interface more accessible.

Let’s know from below reasons why chatbots are the best bet for a mobile website:

♔ | Chatbots provides natural & instant means of communication

Unlike conventional mobile web interface, talking with a business through a chatbot feels something easy and natural. These conversational web messengers are unique in so many ways. One of them is that text interface requires less effort and time than navigating the entire website. Moreover, bots are cost-effective as compared to maintaining different websites for desktop and mobiles.

These conversational messengers are constant workers which are always online at your service and come up with immediate responses and notification. The visitors do not have to install any separate app for conversing with a chatbot and they don’t need any authorisation or go through entire registration process. Chatbots are exceptional in so many ways that it would require a separate story on that.

♕ | Conversational UI gives fast and unique navigational experience

Why should one wait until a heavy traffic websites with tons of images and ads loads? Why not get immediately get what you are looking for by giving inputs a couple of times? Conversational web messengers are neat and smart assistants that are easy to handle and takes less time and effort in navigating the user to the desired location.

Imagine you are on a website say of a hospital and there are hundreds of links and drop down menu you don’t want to search through. There is a chatbot that gives you the information you are finding just by giving a few inputs. You don’t have to search through the websites for long hours unlike conventional mobile websites, just a few keyboard or voice inputs and the job is done.

♖ | Everyone needs personalized marketing

Conversational based web messengers or chatbots creates a feeling of connectivity and improve the relationship of the customer with the brand. Normally, for a personalized service you have to pay for it, that’s not the case with chatbots. There are thousands of websites build for everyone but they don’t serve the customer on individual level.

Conversational web messengers act as personal assistants for all your immediate needs while surfing the web. This also opens up new opportunities for the businesses to endorse their product through personal promotion.

♗ | Testing of new features and introducing new services comes effortless

This is one of the best advantages of deploying a web conversational messenger on your website. Unlike the conventional method of testing new service and feature on a website from designing to coding, it’s less time consuming in a chatbot. AB testing or sometimes called as split testing is one of the most important strategies to deploy chatbot and make it accessible to real users.

In simple words, AB testing in chatbots offers simple way to introduce new services to users, gauge traction and then proceed with the full fledged web development to showcase it in a more grand way.

Biggest Takeaway …

Meaningful applications of conversational web messengers are already up and running, and as cost benefits continue to pile up, the trend will continue to speed up in coming years. Messengers have been part of our life since the inception of the internet. But with the advent of chatbots, we are now in a position to communicate with the people in an automated, quick and meaningful way and optimize the business.

Conversational web messengers are perfect tools to enhance user experience, bring brand awareness among people and eventually conversion to the business. If you are fed up of your boring website interface and want to improve user experience, chatbots or conversational web messenger is the best solution.

Start building a chatbot for your website in less than 5 minutes to automate your sales & marketing routines 👉🏻

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Robinder Gauba
MAKEROBOS

Founder @ Makerobos Innovation Labs | Marketing Strategist | AI/ML Reseacher