Finding the best way to set up your website for maximum conversions is tough. You can run tests on different options and measure the conversion impact...
Finding the best way to set up your website for maximum conversions is tough. You can run tests on different options and measure the conversion impact, but this is super expensive from a design perspective and frustrating when visitors don’t do what you think they will do. Moving the needle on conversion rate with a process like this takes time. A long time.
It’s possible to just have your visitors tell you the perfect way to convert them on your website…
By using logic creatively, you can basically have your visitors tell you the perfect way to set up your website for maximum conversions and then get that in place quickly for all visitors. This is quick, easy, and reliable since the insight comes directly from your visitors. It’s also pretty simple to execute, especially if you already have live chat in place with your team.
At HelpFlow, we provide 24/7 live chat teams for over 100 e-commerce stores. We have driven over $100 million in revenue through millions and millions of chats. In addition to driving sales, a big part of what we do is help our clients unlock insights from chat conversations with their visitors. Using these insights, our clients are able to massively increase the performance of their entire website – not just for people we chat with.
In this post, I will share how you can get insights from your own chat efforts to improve your product search and discovery process – one of the most important elements of conversion on your site.
When someone arrives on your website, they have something in mind they are looking for. The typical ways of setting up website navigation and search are a good starting point, but the best option is to give visitors just a few options to choose from to start their process to finding what they want on your site.
But the problem is, what the heck are they looking for? How can you narrow that down?
You can identify this by testing different chat greetings and seeing how visitors respond. Once you’ve identified the right options that spark up quality live chat conversations, you can tweak your navigation to focus on these elements.
Here's an example...
I’m cheating with the above example since it’s something we’ve learned from an existing client, but it represents the reason this strategy works pretty well. If you sell phone cases, I can almost guarantee your primary navigation focuses first on the actual phone type. But that doesn’t perform best, and it will become obvious quickly with chat testing.
Once you know that customers are primarily focused on style, you can craft your website navigation to focus mainly on style options… THEN, filter down by phone type in a later step.
But again, with testing in a chat conversation, you will start to realize where friction occurs with visitors as they consider different types of factors related to the product.
Sticking with the phone example…
As you have more of these conversations, you’ll figure out the sticking points and different ways to help visitors break through them with a different way of leading the conversation.
Once you identify the right flow of how to filter products for customers, you can work with your design team to build this into your website. It’s a little tough to have a back-and-forth conversation with every single visitor, but there are things you can do in your interface design to accomplish something similar.
For example, for the “iPhone Type” question above, you could create a simple sidebar widget that shows visitors how to find the model number and then immediately filters the products by that type once they enter their model number into your site.
Again, what you’re trying to do here is identify the sequence of filtering criteria and how to best position it.
Once you figure out the best way to help customers find the right products, you can use chat conversations to identify specifically how visitors talk about their problems and ideal solutions. This is marketing 101, but it’s something that is very powerful and easy to implement when you have a chat conversation with people telling you their pain points and solutions.
For example, in the above example, the customer was looking for a phone that was durable, so it wouldn’t break when their kids were using it but still looked good (minimal etc.). Someone else might be looking for the same, but mention their outdoor lifestyle rather than their kids. For products that fit these criteria, you could literally craft this into the actual product descriptions.
For example, “If you’re looking for a case that doesn’t look and feel like a brick but will hold up to the craziness of your kids or the fast-paced adventure lifestyle you live, the Awesomcase 5000 is for you!”.
This is not a rocket science product description, but because it integrates exactly how customers talk about their pain points and what they want, the conversion rate on this product description will crush generic ones you write up.
The key thing to apply here is to chat with your customers to get a clear idea of what they are thinking when they are looking for your product, and then integrate that into your website design and copy.
We run 24/7 live chat teams for 100+ stores and have seen how to best use live chat to drive sales while also leveraging chat conversations to improve your store.
If this strategy sparks ideas for you, I’m happy to get on a Strategy Call to talk through website navigation ideas from other clients that could apply for you – and also how to use chat to drive more sales in general.
Even if we never end up working together, you’ll get a ton of value you can apply since we’ve worked with so many stores.
HelpFlow can drive sales by having our team of human agents available on live chat 24/7 to predict and save abandons before they happen, proactively reach out and engage with visitors via SMS and email after they abandon, and by answering visitor questions live on your website to convert visitors.
Learn MoreHelpFlow can drive sales by having our team of human agents available on live chat 24/7 to predict and save abandons before they happen, proactively reach out and engage with visitors via SMS and email after they abandon, and by answering visitor questions live on your website to convert visitors.
Learn More