In the past years, chatbots have proven to be a great help for companies with digital services. Even though these artificial intelligence programs are still in their first steps when it comes to online shopping assistance, chatbots can already be used in many ways. In fact, the demand for this type of virtual assistant is growing rapidly. According to a report published by Statista in 2018, the number of virtual shoppers will double by 2021. Therefore, if you have an e-commerce business or you’re thinking about building one and selling your products online, adding a shopping bot as an artificial intelligence program can be very beneficial. There are plenty of things you need to take into consideration before making such a decision. However, if you’re convinced that this is the right path for you and your company, keep reading and find out what are the top 10 tips on how to make the perfect shopping bot.
How To Make A Shopping Bot?
Knowing your target audience
Before you jump into the process of creating a shopping bot, you need to know your target audience. You must have a clear picture of who are the people who shop from your store and what they expect from your brand. If you don’t have this information, the best shopping bot in the world won’t help you boost sales. This is why it’s extremely important to get to know your target audience. The best way to do this is by doing a little bit of market research. You can either do it internally or externally. Internally, you can create a team of people of different backgrounds, who are involved in the e-commerce business. Externally, you can ask the opinion of your customers. You can also use social platforms to get in touch with people who have an interest in your products or services. It’s essential that you find out what are the things your customers want from your online store.
Define your business goals
Before you choose to implement a shopping bot, you must know what your business goals are. If you don’t know where you’re heading, it will be almost impossible to get there. You need to determine what are the things you want to accomplish with your online store. When it comes to business goals, there are plenty of things you need to take into consideration. For example, do you want to increase sales? Are you aiming to reduce the number of customer contacts? Or do you want to improve the brand’s reputation? Have you ever asked yourself these questions? The best shopping bot can help you achieve all these goals. However, it all starts with you and your willingness to do things better. The sooner you make up your mind, the better.
Create a user-friendly interface
A shopping bot is an AI program, therefore, you need to make sure that the interface is user-friendly. If your virtual assistant is hard to use and navigate, most customers won’t want to use it. The shopping bot is there to simplify your customers’ shopping experience. It’s meant to make their lives easier, not harder. Therefore, you need to make sure that the interface is easy to use. Don’t force your customers to read through long user manuals. Instead, focus on simplicity and create an interface that even your grandma can use. It’s also essential that you test your shopping bot to find out if it has any usability issues. You need to use different devices and test the software on different browsers. This will help you identify the bugs and fix them before the bots are released on your website.
Select the most suitable AI platform for your chatbot
There are plenty of artificial intelligence programs that can be used to create a shopping bot. However, not all of them have the same features and benefits. Therefore, it’s essential that you choose the right platform for your shopping bot. By taking this decision, you can avoid many problems and headaches in the future. Keep in mind that you’ll be working with this platform for months, if not years. Therefore, it’s best that you choose a bot that can grow with your business. Don’t rush the process. Instead, take your time and find the right platform for your shopping bot. You can use the following tips to help you make the best decision:
Ensure the quality of your data
No matter how advanced your AI platform is, it won’t deliver excellent results if the data it’s working with is of poor quality. It’s essential that you clean and organizes your data before you feed it to your shopping bot. If your bot has poor data, it can affect your brand’s reputation in a negative way. People might think that your shopping bot is spammy, which will lead to a bad reputation. You can clean your data manually or you can hire a professional company. If you decide to go with the second option, make sure that you choose the right data cleaning service. There are plenty of scammers out there, so be careful.
Create a conversational experience for your users
One of the most important things to take into consideration when creating a shopping bot is its ability to create a conversational experience. The best way to do this is by getting in touch with your customers. You can use the bots to answer simple questions and solve basic problems. However, the best shopping bot will be one that can converse with customers. It will help them solve their problems and provide them with recommendations based on their needs. The best way to create a conversational experience for your users is by recording your conversations. You can do this either internally or externally. If you decide to do it internally, you can use specialized software to record your conversations. If you decide to do it externally, you can use a platform like Five to record your conversations. Recording your conversations will help you identify the mistakes and fix them before the bots are launched on your website.
The Benefits Of A Shopping Bot
- The most basic benefit of a shopping bot is that it can help you improve the efficiency of your website. A bot can automatically do simple tasks like the ones mentioned above. This means that you don’t have to spend your time manually doing them.
- Your visitors will love a shopping bot because they will get to interact with it in non-intrusive ways. You won’t have to ask them to log in and type their details for an order or create an account for a bot to work with them. They will be able to do all of these things without having to leave their favorite website or app.
- A great way for your customers to get value from your shopping bot is by using it as a personal assistant. By using the bot, they can ask it questions, solve problems, find deals and make recommendations based on their needs. The best thing about this is that they don’t even need to leave the website where they are currently browsing around on!
- In addition, people who use your shopping bots are more likely to become loyal customers since they will be able to connect with you in an easy and fun way without having any hassle at all!
Wrapping up
The above-mentioned tips will help you make the best shopping bot. However, it’s important to remember that building a great shopping bot takes time and effort. Therefore, make sure that you’re ready for such a project. It’s essential that you do your research before creating your shopping bot. You need to know your target audience and understand what their needs are. You also need to define your business goals and find out the most suitable AI platform for the bot. Then, you need to make sure that the data used by your AI program is of high quality. Once you’re ready to start building your bot, make sure that it creates a conversational experience for your users.
