If you use LiveChat on your e-commerce store but don’t get strategic with chat invites or the flow of the conversation, then you are leaving a lot of sales opportunities on the table. Implementing live chat optimization techniques can help capture these potential sales and enhance customer engagement.

In this post, we will share the conversation flow strategy we built based on running live chat for hundreds of e-commerce stores for five years doing millions of chats and producing tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Live Chat Optimization: Strategic Visitor Invitations

If you do live chat well, the vast majority of your conversations will start from a chat greeting. These can be configured to automatically pop up based on visitor behavior and then start a conversation. Incorporating live chat optimization strategies ensures that these interactions are both efficient and engaging.

We will cover the timing of chat invites in another post, but for now, let us focus on what the greetings should say.

1. The greeting is automated, but it shouldn’t feel like that to the visitor. Make it low pressure and somewhat personal sounding, as if your agent has basically typed the message themselves.
2. Rather than saying “do you need any help? “, use a pointed question that sparks up the conversation. For example, if your products are mainly used for two or three cases, make that part of the greeting.

This will cause many more visitors to reply since the question is relevant to them.

Build Their Interest in the Product with Questions, Naturally

By having a closed question like the above example, you will get a lot of replies. But what’s more helpful is that these replies will contain a lot of detail that will enable you to move the conversation forward.

For example, visitors will answer your question but give you more detail about their specific use case or why they are interested.

You can use that information to better understand their needs and ask more questions to build their interest in the product.

1. For example, if they are on a short timeline to get the product, you can reassure them with your fast shipping policies or ease of set up of the product.
2. Maybe they’re buying the product as a gift for a loved one. You can answer their questions about delivery time while also mentioning a few things that people love about the product and that their loved one will appreciate.

If They Aren’t Buying Today, Convert to a Sales Lead

By engaging with them in such a natural way, prospects will often open up about when they are planning on buying in the future. If it’s clear that they are not going to convert to a sale today, you can use this as an opportunity to take the conversation offline so you can follow up and close the sale. It’s all part of effective live chat optimization.

1. For example, if they ask a more technical question and you can defer to someone on your team, this is an opportunity to gather their contact information for a follow up later.
2. Or maybe they said they are choosing between a few options on your site as well as a competitor. If this is the case, you could offer to shoot them a price match coupon or discount code from your team.
3. And of course, if this is a higher ticket purchase that sometimes gets closed over the phone, offering to schedule a quick call can go a long way since they aren’t used to this from competitors. Sparking up a natural conversation on chat and then taking them over to phone is not common in most markets.

Have the Sales Machine Running 24/7

If you are already doing live chat, you may be able to replicate some of this in-house during business hours. But it is best to have a dedicated LiveChat team 24/7 engaging with visitors in this way. With 30% to 50% of most website traffic and sales coming after hours, business hours live chat is not enough.

We run live chat 24/7 for hundreds of e-commerce stores and may be able to help you. Book a strategy call today so we can evaluate your business and see how many sales we can generate for you.