In the digital space, information is often given. That’s it. You look for information, it is given to you and if you have more questions you need to either conduct another search, spend time finding the answer, and just maybe you get what you were looking for.
It’s one-sided and conversions feel forced.
If you want to leave a question, there’s often a form which is asking your basic details and then there’s a glory hole of possibilities for misinterpretation. I mean the open field.
The thing is, at this point you’ve already spent quite some time finding what you’re looking for, and now you have to go to one more one-sided communication channel. Would it be easier for you if there was some kind of way to spark a conversation as soon as you land on a page?
Why do conversations work?
First of all, conversations are engaging and they feel personal. Conversations help to set the tone for the rest of the experience. Conversations are also a way to build trust between a company and a prospective customer. Let’s put it this way: would a discussion make you feel more trusting towards a company than filling a faceless form and hoping for an answer?
That’s what I thought.
Second: with a static form, there is always a high risk of form abandonment. With interactive solutions such as chatbots and other conversion tools, this can be dropped drastically when your website visitor doesn’t need to do all the work themselves. Chatbots help the customer and provide value all the time,
Third: conversations give you information that would otherwise go unnoticed or at least would be very hard to capture. By basic website analytics tools you’ll see where people come from and where do they drop off. These don’t tell you yet what they were frustrated with and why they didn’t convert. You get nothing but anonymous numbers.
Conversations and conversational analytics provide way more insight to your audience and with this, you can provide them with even better conversations and service.
Will a chatbot help me to start converting from conversations?
Yes… and no. Chatbots are one means to the end, but not a silver bullet. They can be as bad of a showstopper as any other poorly designed element on your website if indeed, designed poorly. The conversation needs to be top-notch and actually made to help the client. Service and conversation come first, conversions second.
Too often chatbots are either purely made from a template (and it shows) or they exist solely for the purpose of “having one” (and that shows, too). These chatbots usually don’t answer your questions, they just try to get your information to be added to the endless stream of so-called MQLs. Someone might call you and try to sell to you, even though you are not that far yet on your buyer journey.
It’s not a great customer experience if you don’t feel like you’re getting what you were looking for and thus it won’t bring great business results.
How to make your chatbots to stand out and yield results?
Here’s three top tips to keep in mind when using chatbots to take those conversations to conversions.
- Make it contextual 🎯If there’s a chatbot on your front page, it meets a lot of people in different phases of their buyer’s journey. This needs to be accounted for in the way the bot offers its help. Make sure you address different needs and provide concrete steps to go forward.If there’s a bot on a product or service-related page, your website visitors will have a different set of questions there. One size does not fit all, nor can a very general bot actually serve your potential customers so well that you could convert them into business.
Here’s an example of a Integration bot that provides information and is not forcing the person to give out information first 👇🏼
2. Provide a variety of conversion points 📍
You can’t convert all the website visitors into paying customers instantly, so please, try to see what other conversion types could be valuable for your business. For example, short consultation call, signing up for an event or a newsletter or sending them an ebook are all really good conversion points.
None of those will turn into revenue within the first 24 hours but hang in there. You are attracting the people who were not ready to buy, but were interested enough to trust you with their contact information! And we all know, nowadays even valid contact information is a scarce commodity.
Below there’s an example of a bot that makes sure the conversation stays friendly and on brand while still providing information and opportunities for the person discussing with it.
3. Align with your brand 🎨
This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. All the elements on your website should reflect your brand, your values, your promise to your customers. This means tonality, visual design, and service level – and all other brand aspects. And the bots, too.
Align the bots to match the rest of the experience. It makes a difference if the look and feel are polished, compared to the ones that look like “plug and play” -versions that look only like the chatbot provider, but not your brand. Always go with the solution providers who have the option to change the bot to look like your brand.
How to get your conversations to turn into conversions?
I will just toot our horn here (🎺). Leadoo’s conversion tools include everything you need to make sure your conversations keep turning to conversions.
You’ll get conversation analytics to show what kind of discussions your visitors are having with your bots. You’ll get different bot types to ensure the best type of engagement for your potential customers. You’ll get information on identified companies that visit your site, even when they don’t leave their contact details. This allows you to spark conversations with them proactively and show your service level.
And then there’s the Leadoo service you get. Our conversion specialists are always at your disposal and you’ll be assigned a Customer Success Manager of your own whose sole job is to make sure your Leadoo solutions keep converting at all times. You can check out for example our post about our onboarding process.
The important thing is to keep in mind that conversations lead to conversions. Let us help you maximize on those results! 💙
