Customers do not trust stock availability. That cuts sales before Christmas

Fortune favours the prepared, and for online stores before Christmas that goes double. Based on estimates and experience from previous years, this Christmas is set to break records again. Customers are expected to spend over 21.5 billion Czech crowns in online stores. Stores keep looking for ways to remove the obstacles that could stop people from buying, so that they win the largest possible share of that astronomical sum.

One way to find out what is troubling visitors on your site is to talk to them in real time. An online store selling home appliances that deployed the live chat Smartsupp.com on its site found that before buying, visitors most often checked the date on which the goods would be delivered. Even though availability was stated on the site, that information was not enough for customers and they wanted to know the exact delivery date. If they did not find out the exact date on live chat, they did not complete the purchase.

"Welcome. Do you know when we will deliver the goods?

Ask us."

The store decided to act on this finding and address it proactively. They did not wait for the visitor to ask about the delivery date – they were the first to invite the question through an automatic chat message. Every visitor who was in the store for the first time and spent a certain amount of time there received: "Welcome. Do you know when we will deliver the goods? Ask us."

The results were incredible. 7.73 % of all the visitors who received the message responded to it and started chatting with an agent. Of all the chatting visitors, 22.83 % then converted into customers straight away during the live chat conversation. So if a store has 100,000 visitors a month, it gains over 1,765 new customers through live chat.

Here is the resulting table that the store measured. 85 visitors converted into customers over 379 chat conversations.

The store can no longer imagine this Christmas without live chat. Customers need certainty that the goods will be delivered on the day they want, and they do not trust the information written in the store. The live chat Smartsupp.com is something like an online shop assistant that builds a personal relationship with the customer in the store and raises trust in it. This year the store plans to refine the message it sends to visitors even further, and believes that with the right opening it will reach an even higher conversion rate.