There are many ways you can improve your website’s functionality. You can enhance the web design, add more plugins, or change your content management system. These options are a reliable way to improve how your website functions.
If you’ve been looking into ways to improve user experience on your website but want something new, you should consider adding your very own chatbot. If you haven’t felt that possibility but are seriously considering adding it now, read on.
This article will cover how a chatbot can improve your website’s functions. You can use this to make an informed decision about whether the abilities a chatbot has is something you need or want for your website.
To start your adventures and search for knowledge about chatbot benefits to your website, we should talk about what chatbots are in the first place.
What are Chatbots?
Before we showcase their full benefits on your website, let’s clarify what chatbots are.
First, chatbots are software or computer programs designed to respond to humans through an online messaging app. They can mimic conversations between humans through text or voice-based messaging apps.
Some chatbots are made for pure entertainment purposes, while others have used this live chatting tool to the fullest by automating specific conversations related to their business. For example, they can cause a chatbot to help make particular customer service steps faster and easier for both the company and the customer.
According to Sytian, a web developer philippines expert, as business tech advances, so do their websites’ functionalities. Web developers have been integrating chatbots on websites for aesthetics and the advantages it brings to a business.
In this post, we’ll cover those advantages and why your business needs to consider integrating a chatbot:
Enhanced User Engagement
One of the benefits of having chatbots on your website would be how much it benefits and improves user experiences. When you increase the frequency of positive user experiences that your website has, or at the very least, you don’t create negative user experiences, that will, in turn, enhance how engaged users will be as they interact with your website.
When your website has a high user engagement, that may make people want to stay on your website longer. The longer people stay on your website, the likelier they are to enjoy what else you offer, whether it be a product, a service, or just some content on your website.
Better user engagement on your website isn’t just about getting your web users to stay a lot longer on your website. It’s also about getting them to want to come back to it.
With the help of a chatbot, users will know that they have something that can guide them through your website if they need it. Thus, it will make them want to come back to your website.
Streamlining Customer Support
One of the most common uses for chatbots in websites is managing customer concerns, especially when responding to frequently asked questions.
What’s excellent about chatbots is that they’re available to operate 24/7, even during the holidays. If your customers have any concerns in the middle of the night, your chatbots can answer whenever possible.
If a customer encounters a problem with your business, the longer it takes you to solve it, the more negative the experience is for them. But, if they receive guidance and an answer to their questions or concerns fast and, better yet, if they get a solution to their problems promptly through your chatbots, then you avoid them having a negative experience with your brand.
What’s also great about chatbots is that they’re improving customer support not only on the customers’ side but also on your customer service team’s side.
Chatbots can provide a step-by-step guide for frequently asked questions of your customers. That way, the more surface-level concerns of the customers won’t be something your available workforce will have to deal with directly when there are customers with more severe concerns they could now help with.
Gather Valuable Customer Data
As your users on your website continue to use and interact with your chatbot, you can look at the chat history to determine what questions they usually ask your chatbot.
You can then use that information to tweak, change, and develop your website in a way that either makes it easier for them to get the answers they need through the chatbot or makes them not ask that question so often.
Of course, it’s a good idea to indicate in the chatbot that you are collecting said data or that the conversations are organized so the users know and you are transparent about using user data through the chatbot.
Your chatbot becomes another tool with which you can create decisions for your website based on user behavior rather than just doing them out of thin air.
Effective Lead Generation
Another way a chatbot can boost the effectiveness of your website is by serving as an avenue of lead generation.
Some people present their target audience with a landing page that is just the chatbot itself, which will serve as a tool for qualifying a prospect so that they become a qualified lead.
They will ask questions to let your sales team know that someone who has interacted with the chatbot presents qualities that could make them a likely customer.
That way, you can improve the quality of the leads interacting with your website. At the same time, it can help your sales team determine when leads from your website are worth nurturing and which ones will be most receptive to a sales team rep talking to them.
Personalize the Browsing Experience
If you run a B2B business, personalizing the website experience for your more niche target audience helps make you stand out from your competition.
Although this applies strongly to B2B businesses, that doesn’t mean that B2C companies won’t benefit from adding a personalized touch to their customers’ browsing experience.
When people feel like their browsing experience on a business’s website is personal, it makes them feel special. And they would feel closer to the company, which makes them feel special. With a chatbot, you can add that special touch to their browsing experience.
For example, your chatbot can have premade prompts that ask users questions that can help customize and tailor the chatbot’s responses to them.
Or, you can create a landing page for a specific target customer or account, and a chatbot could already address them by name.
All of these echo the same effect of a more personalized website experience for your website visitors.
Boost Sales
Another method of how a chatbot can help your website is by boosting your sales.
If you’re an online store, or your website has an online store, you can have a personal shopper online in the form of a chatbot that your website users can use.
It can serve as a more comprehensive and conversational search bar if they’re looking for an item.
It can also trigger messages if your users do a specific action on your website.
For example, if they add a particular item to their cart, your chatbot can give them some recommendations of other items that previous shoppers have bought along with the item in their cart.
Your chatbot can be a great way to upsell and cross-sell to your customers. Plus, your customers can ask specific questions to sift through the products that your catalog may have.
For example, they can ask the chatbot if they have any “purple women’s tops,” and the chatbot can serve them some options directly through the chatbot.
Customer Feedback Acquisition
Some feedback forms require the customer to send an email. Some need the customers to link out of the webpage that they’re currently in.
Too many customer feedback forms require a lot of clicking on the part of the users, which may be why they won’t feel compelled to continue giving feedback if they encounter an issue with your website.
However, prompting a web user to give feedback through the chatbot is much more compelling.
That’s because they don’t have to click out of the webpage, they don’t have to go to their emails, and they can type in the chatbox what their issues are, which you can file away and note.
Again, it’s an excellent avenue for getting to know your website users so you can better your website for them.
Choosing the Right Chatbot for Your Website
Now that you know more about how using a chatbot on your website can make it more efficient, here are some tips on choosing the right one for your site.
Integration and compatibility
First, consider the other apps that you have on your website. Your CRMs connected to your website where you want the chatbot feedback to go must be compatible.
So, make sure that your software ecosystem all works together. Don’t forget the other plugins on your website as well.
Advanced Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing
Although it might be more costly or work to develop, it’s worth going for a chatbot with advanced speech recognition abilities and NLP or natural language processing abilities.
That way, it can scale appropriately and won’t feel constrained to talk to on the user’s side.
Customization and Scalability
Businesses should seek a chatbot that can grow with the business.
Since developing one from scratch is a lot of work and all the data gathered with said chatbot will inform future campaigns, you want to ensure that the chatbot you have at first would be the one you still have once you make changes to your site.
By looking at the customizability and scalability of the chatbot you’re getting, you’re futureproofing your website functionality.
Security and privacy
Since you plan on using chatbots and your users’ interactions with chatbots, you should have a chatbot that allows users not to collect their interactions.
This ensures your users feel secure interacting with it and signals that you’re doing your due diligence in respecting user privacy.
Omnichannel Integration
At first, you might not need it, but the bigger your website grows, the more you may rely on your chatbot. In that case, you should look into a chatbot with some omnichannel integration.
That way, you can use it on your website, social media, and other marketing channels outside your website.
Conclusion
These benefits all come with the proper integration of a chatbot not only into your website but also into your marketing and sales strategy as a whole.
Thus, if you’ve been wanting to invest more into elevating your website’s abilities, then consider adding a chatbot to it so you and your website users can reap the benefits that come with it.
