How a Virtual Receptionist Can Power-Up Your eCommerce Sales
With the right tools, anything is possible – as 19th Century author Wallace Wattles once said:
“It is essential to have good tools, but it is also essential that the tools should be used in the right way”
In today’s fast-moving world that couldn’t be any truer. If you need to get somewhere, you have maps in your pocket. If you need to pay for an item, you can do this through your smartphone – tradesmen need the right tools but so does everyone else looking to do their daily tasks in this technological age.
If you run an eCommerce business, having the right tools to maximize your sales is essential for the month to month business survival and also to grow your business and move forwards with the times.
You can drive people to your site using SEO, online advertising and social media but this can be a waste of time and money if you don’t have the right tools on your website to convert visitors into sales.
User Experience & Conversion Rate Optimization
User Experience (UX) is the science & art of creating a website that is easy and if possible – enjoyable to use. UX is also thought to be a Google ranking factor – if a visitor arrives at your site, can’t find what they want and immediately leave – that’s bad for your SEO. On the other hand, having a website that is fast to load on all devices and is easy to use, can help drive sales and improve positions on search engines.
Visitors also want to be able to trust your website and brand, before they part with their payment details. Testimonials, reviews and a professional design can all help drive a sale.
Some people may also visit your contact page – looking for a high street address and telephone number. There is where a virtual office address from a company such as physicaladdress.com and an answering service from a reputable company like Moneypenny can set you apart from the competition.
But if you really want to power-up your eCommerce performance, you may be missing one essential tool; live chat with a virtual assistant.
A Live Chat Virtual Assistant
A live chat virtual assistant isn’t as complicated as it sounds and for many eCommerce sites, they have become essential parts of the sales cycle. They are effectively your website’s assistant, appearing as a dialogue box in the bottom corner to help your customer with their experience on-site.
Used correctly, the virtual assistant can boost your eCommerce performance significantly, giving you the time and freeing up your resources to focus on building out your business. Here are just some of the benefits of using live chat with a virtual assistant.
A Better User Experience
Many online brands who invest in SEO, PPC and social are great at driving visitor traffic but can struggle with turning those visitors into paying customers. There are a few reasons for that;
– The customer can’t find the information they are looking for
– The customer wants some very specific data
– The customer wants to speak to someone before making their purchase
There are many other reasons but these are just three.
What a virtual assistant can do is help answer these questions and reduce the amount of time that the person is on-site so that they can move towards making a faster purchase decision.
The less time on site, the better as studies have shown the longer a potential customer has to spend searching for the information they want, the less likely they are to buy from you.
Be Available 24/7
Simply by being available, you can build massive trust with your potential customer. Using an overseas virtual assistant company such as Growithva in a different time zone for any type of work can have significant advantages – in terms of their cost and availability. Different people respond differently to different platforms, by presenting more options for your customer to communicate you are showing you are more responsive, and generally more interested in their business.
But a live chat virtual assistant can also cover for times when you are either simply not available. Whether it is the weekend, where you need that cover, or out of your standard working hours. Whether it is a person on the other end of the virtual line that can field a query or call, or it is a program that can put the customer in the right place at the right time, building trust is key with the first interactions on the site.
Create a better all-round service
By answering questions quicker, by being responsive to the needs of your customer, by taking the time to show that there is someone on the end of ‘the line’ or that someone will contact the customer at opening hours; you are creating a better all-round service.
You have brought trust into the buying-process and shown that there is also a level of accountability that standard sites may not have. Studies have shown that when customers feel appreciated, they are five times more likely to use your product/service again and three times more likely to rate that service.
All of this creates a better output for your online business, essential if you want to see it grow and develop over time.
