While most important e-commerce websites are struggling to try to get everything on their websites automated, all of them have to think carefully of an important principle: visitors are not customers and it’s more and more important to use all the available methods to convert them into buyers.
Unfortunately, automation and self-care is not enough. People still want to hear a voice, want to get help and support during the purchase process, want to feel comfortable that on the other side there is a human that can take care of them while they are going to buy something online.
This recent research from JupiterResearch demonstrates what I stated above.
As this article from The New York Times points out:
Businesses should consider themselves warned: Prepare to invest heavily in traditional customer service, or prepare to lose customers.
The point is to make this easily available from the web. A “call-to-action” offered by customer engagement solutions like my company’s Sitòfono can improve this relationship between prospects/customers and the online business and help the latter to convert more visitors into real customers that pay real money. In addition, getting information on what web page customers were while using Sitofono or if they made a purchase after having used it, let businesses easily measure the effectiveness of this customer engagement tool.
Why this? Maybe you haven’t realized it yet, but most ecommerce websites are full of barriers. Enrico, Sitòfono’s product manager, well summarize them:
The first “shield” is distraction: customers can go off track if they don’t get a clear focus
The second barrier is lack of comprehension: do they understand clearly what they are looking at? Can you assure them that they got the message?
The third barrier is lack of persistence: will they come back the next day?
The fourth barrier is mistrust: can they judge a book by its cover? Don’t they need direct contact to be assured that you are a trusted person? Visual contact will be the best, but even voice contact can make the difference
The fifth barrier is hesitation: when facing the payment form, they can get scared, or they need some more information that hasn’t been found on the website. At least, it wasn’t noticed before.
BTW, Enrico is offering a Christmas gift to a lucky online business who wants to try our service out. A complete Sitòfono package for 3 months. More on his blog.
enrico marongiu, gement tools, luca filigheddu, sitofono
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