Member Article

Ho Ho How Live Chat Can Improve Your Sales This Christmas

We are just under three months away from the big day, despite it being the same date every year Christmas still manages to creep up on everyone! Physical shops such as Selfridges and the supermarkets are already starting to place their Christmas stock on the shelves, therefore ensure your online store is prepared early enough to benefit from consumer spending habits.

Firstly your organisation needs to decide what deals will be occurring during the festive period, and if it will be partaking in the Black Friday / Cyber Monday frenzy? Once decided, you can select which mediums to share your offers via; this will optimise on your existing audience and help to gain momentum for your marketing campaigns. Ensure your festive designs are drawn up and approved early, so there are no obstacles on the days your newsletters and social media posts are scheduled to go out.

Promoting on your Website

Once your well thought out marketing campaigns have bought traffic to your site, your visitors expect to find your offers easily, therefore your website will need to have been redesigned to include promotional content on your homepage and the relating webpages.

To help sign post visitors further Proactive Promotions can be displayed on the visitor’s browser, the image can be triggered by the duration they have been on the website for or what page they have viewed. A URL can be assigned to the Proactive Promotion which automatically redirects the visitor to the designated page.

This is useful for upselling and cross selling purposes as multiple Promotions can be set up based on what product page the individual is viewing. Triggering the Promotion to appear after a certain amount of time, can help identify if they are genuinely interested and help to increase the upsell / cross sell success rate.

Converting on your Website

Now that your visitors are interested in your products, how do you ensure that they purchase the item? Ask them to chat with your representatives.

A Proactive Invitation can display similarly to a Promotion, however rather than redirecting them to another page the Invitation initiates a chat session when accepted. It is beneficial to have a chat button available on every page, as the communication channel is easily accessible to the visitor at any point during their browsing journey. However it is ideal to have a Proactive Invitation on the checkout page, as this is where many people will have doubts and is their last chance to bail before committing, the Invitation helps to reduce these abandonments.

Representatives can be on hand in a one-to-one environment to answer any question the visitor has about the product or the checkout process. Reassuring visitors can give them the push they need to complete the purchase. During the festive period some stores will extend their returns policy or offer gift receipts, as they understand that items intended to be a present are bought in advance and may need to be returned, the operators can inform the visitor in chat if this is part of their policy, giving them confidence to purchase as they can get their money back if they need to.

Live chat is great for conveying information on your website with the use of Promotions, or within chat whether the visitor initiates it from a button or the Proactive Invitation. Having representatives available to help visitors with their questions and any issues they are potentially facing can help lead them to convert on your website. There is just under three months until Christmas, prepare now to increase your sale potential.

Does your organization already have your strategy in place for the festive period? Why not download our whitepaper for further information.

Author Bio: Gemma Baker is the Marketing Executive for UK live chat services provider, Click4Assistance, with a range of digital knowledge within PPC advertising, SEO practices, email campaigns and social media.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Click4Assistance .