How to develop your chatbot for e-commerce ? 6 tips to consider

Do you run an e-commerce site and want to improve your customers’ experience? Integrating a chatbot on the platform can be a great idea and help to improve the experience of your customers, create leads and attract new consumers. Moreover, this system incorporating artificial intelligence technology is particularly popular at the moment. For your chatbot to be relevant in its mission, however, it must be developed properly. In this article, we give you some tips on how to do this.

Determine the roles of the AI tool

When you plan to develop a chatbot for your e-commerce site, it is essential to know what it will be used for and for what purpose. This allows an intelligent use of the tool. Moreover, by knowing the purpose and role of the bot, customers will have no trouble using it.

In order to define the role of this AI tool, give answers to the following questions:

• Will the chatbot to be developed be used to improve your customer service?
• Will the chatbot be used for lead nurturing?
• Will it only serve as a communication tool?

By determining the role of your chatbot before its development, you will be able to define the different benefits it can offer to your customers and website visitors. If these benefits are not very clear, users will not use it. For example, the chatbot can help the future buyer to know the characteristics of the products you present in detail and to have a comparison on the competing offers.

Start with a simple but effective chatbot

A successful chatbot can integrate various features. However, it is best to start with few, but effective options. You just need to have the right basics that you can manage well and that are easy to use for your site visitors and potential customers. To do this:

• Your chatbot should be able to communicate as easily as possible with all the categories of customers you are targeting. The information it gives should therefore be clear and easy to understand. The same goes for its communication style.
• Your chatbot must be able to represent you. It is essential that it is a true representative of your brand or product in its communication mode and style.

Think about developing an AI tool that is simple, but practical, with as few features as possible, but that are well thought out in their design.

Evolving your chatbot

Having a chatbot with reduced functionality is the principle at the beginning of the launch of your activity and your AI tool. As your business evolves, the chatbot should also be improved over time. Don’t hesitate to see and be inspired by the solutions offered by competitors in this case. This will allow you to optimize your bot gradually. It is also a question here of adding other parameters and other options that can facilitate navigation, searches and communication with visitors and customers.

In any case, in order not to get lost and mislead visitors, you should always keep an eye on the objectives and the role of the chatbot.

Naming the chatbot

A chatbot serves as an interlocutor between the brand or product and the visitor. It must be able to put the visitor at ease and talk to him or her in a fluent way. This is true even if a bot is a purely marketing tool.

Therefore, take the time to give it a name. This name will differentiate it from other chatbots available on other platforms. A bot with a name also gives the customer and visitor confidence and assurance. By trusting the chatbot with a name, he will be more inclined to chat, to inquire and to want to know about the brand or the product. This makes the sales process easier for the seller, and the buying process easier for the potential customer.

Take your time when choosing the name of your bot in this case. It is important that it is easy to remember and that the name attracts the visitor’s attention. Finally, note that the name of your chatbot can be searched by Internet users.

Opting to use a good chatbot authoring solution

You can’t have a good AI tool like a chatbot without a good solution for creating and developing the solution. Currently, on the market, you have many solutions like software and quality web applications that can help you in designing your chatbot.

These tools can be paid or free. You may not even need to code to use them. Among the recommended chatbot development tools, you have :

• Botnation AI
• Botsify
• Chatfuel
• ai
• Team Brain
• Twilio Flex

Alternatively, you can hire a professional developer to do it. The advantage of this option is that you can get a chatbot that is customized as much as you like.

Using a bot in the best cases and at the right time

It’s true that chatbots are trendy at the moment. But that doesn’t mean you have to integrate them on your platform. If you feel that it is not yet time to have a bot on your e-commerce site, do not force it.

For the chatbot to be relevant, it must help your customers to get answers to their questions and to be optimally informed. The tool must also get closer to your customers and visitors. It is a solution that will directly ask your customers what they need and what it can do to help them. A chatbot is also there to collect information about the visitor. This is important in order to know the needs of the visitors and to be able to offer them the products or services they need. This practice is called lead nurturing and allows you to offer answers, information and personalized offers to each customer of your e-commerce platform.

And finally, the chatbot should also allow you to get feedback from each of your customers while advertising to them. The whole web marketing process should be reflected in the chatbot’s actions and role, without the customer being aware of it explicitly.