How can messaging help companies maximize their e-commerce performance?

• Looking past mid-April, the number of visits exceeds the number observed during the first week of winter sales in different divisions of the consumer products industry: DIY (2x), food, high-tech, household appliances, and sports
• E-commerce: weekly sales surpass the sales observed during the first week of winter sales in the same markets (2x for sports, high-tech and household appliances; 5x for DIY)
• Click rates are 2x higher on the chat window from the week of April 20th onwards, compared to sales periods, demonstrating the visitor’s need for assistance,
• Customer case study: A leader in electronics and appliances relies on messaging to deliver relevant and instrumental guidance to visitors, with a conversion post-chat rate above 20%.

Times of crisis mark a unique opportunity for brands to display their strengths and grow closer to consumers, by being available and listening to them. As McKinsey points out, "[In these times], a customer’s interaction with a company can trigger an immediate and lingering effect on his or her sense of trust and loyalty." According to the American research firm, "rapidly innovating to redesign journeys that matter to a very different context will be key."* For many players whose businesses have been entirely converted to digital overnight, online conversation has become an essential tool to assist customers seeking advice and reassurance; a key means of remote communication to satisfy, convert and retain more visitors.

On the part of online sales, as shown in our second chart, the increase in transactions has persisted since the beginning of March, with levels higher than those of sales for our clients in the food, high-tech, and DIY sectors. From mid-April onwards, weekly sales exceed the number of transactions recorded during the first week of winter sales for all the divisions studied (2x for sports, high-tech and household appliances; 5x for DIY), with the exception of fashion, which remains at half the level recorded during sales periods.

• Awareness. Have you ever visited a site, collected items in your shopping cart, and then left the page? Whether it's a lack or surplus of information, mistrust, or a site that is just too complex to navigate, the reasons for abandoning a shopping cart can vary. What these cases have in common though, is a lack of engagement from the buyer. What if an expert had offered to assist you via chat? Our conversational platform includes a targeting engine which, based on various criteria such as browsing behavior, detects buyers in need of assistance. A chat window appears to offer them assistance. 

Since the beginning of the crisis, many of our clients have adjusted their targeting strategies to strengthen their online assistance. This is shown in the graph below, which depicts the evolution of click rates and the proportion of visitors who select the chat button to receive online support among our customers in the consumer products industry. This is twice as high from the week of April 20th onward, compared to very busy periods like sales seasons.

• Consideration. Once the customer is engaged through the chat, the online agent offers the visitor relevant purchasing assistance, in the same way as they would in a physical store. 

• Purchase. One study “Total economic impact” conducted by Forrester** on a European e-commerce website stated that an average conversion rate of 13% for customers who engaged with an online agent, compared to an average rate of 4% for visitors who didn’t engage via chat. In mid-April, a similar conversion rate was observed on our platform in the consumer goods industry; experiencing a peak of 16.5% the week of March 16th.
• Support. Visitors are currently looking for reassurance, which explains in part, our record “click-to-chat” rates. Direct, free, and widely used, messaging is popular with customers and brands alike. 70% of consumers prefer messaging to voice calls when contacting customer service.*** For the latter, the possibility for agents to conduct multiple conversations simultaneously, or to automate part of the conversations, are areas in which brands will see significant improvement in productivity.
• Loyalty. A happy client is much more likely to come back! The study “Total economic impact” from Forrester** shows a 2.2x higher probability of return purchasing for customers who were engaged via chat.

• Pre-sales from 8 am - 8 pm; a hundred professional sales staff are deployed on the site to answer visitors' questions about the brand's different product families, providing them with their expertise which allows them to make the best choices.
• Pre-sales in the evening; or when all the advisors are occupied, a community of thoughtfully selected independent experts called ibbü takes over to be sure visitors are assisted 24 hours a day.
• After-sales (FAQ and contact pages), Due to the abundance of questions streaming in thanks to COVID (delivery, deadlines, etc.), a chatbot is deployed, either to handle part of the site visitors' conversations itself or to transfer the most complex cases to the professional advisers. 

• to provide visitors with relevant and reliable guidance concerning purchasing, with a post-chat conversion rate of over 20%, 
• while generating maximum customer satisfaction, with a post-chat CSAT score of over 80%.