TOPICS: Chatbot for Businesses    Building a chatbot   

Chatbot For Small Business - Common Problems with Small Business Websites and How a Chatbot Can Help

A small business website is always a work in progress. As your first point of contact with potential customers, your website needs to appear as professional, responsive and up-to-date as possible. But running a small business means that you already have a lot on your plate that needs attention at the same time, which could lead you into making the wrong calls about your website. The good news is that none of this is irreversible, and building chatbots for small business can help you address most of them. Let’s run through some common problems that small business websites face, and how chatbot development offers a solution.

Your website isn’t mobile-friendly.

Most modern internet users are on mobile for the greater part of their day. They are short on time, generally on the move, and accustomed to making conversation via instant messaging. If these mobile internet users are your target customers, your business will need a strong mobile presence. This includes having a responsive, easy-to-use mobile website, and customer support that is reachable through instant messaging. Choosing to create a chatbot lets you do both.

Chatbots for small business are ideal for interacting with mobile users. They immediately make your website more accessible, greeting visitors with a friendly "hello" and offering to get them any information they need. Talking to these AI bots is easy because they understand natural language, and a user can do anything from browsing a product range to raising a complaint, without having to wait for assistance.

Your website doesn’t have a clear call-to-action.

Millennial internet users don’t spend more than a few seconds on a new website if there’s nothing compelling them to stay. You could set up a great-looking website with solid content and still lose out on potential leads if you aren’t providing your visitors with a reason to browse your site or an easy way to contact you. Remember, it’s up to you to tell your potential customers what you want them to do. And opting to create a chatbot for your website is an excellent start.

The best chatbots for small business are able to effectively engage with a website’s visitors, and give them a clear call-to-action in the course of a casual conversation. For instance, let’s assume that you’re in the business of providing home cleaning and repair services. A visitor has just arrived at your site while browsing for cleaning services in their city. They can see your site as just one of many available options, or your chatbot can invite them to find out more about your services.

Chatbot: "Hi! Thanks for visiting ABC Services. Did you know you can enjoy 50% off on furniture cleaning this spring?"

The discount immediately attracts the visitor’s attention. Below the chatbot’s message, they see more options including "Find out more", "Other cleaning services", "AC repair and maintenance", "Kitchen and plumbing", and "Why choose ABC". On selecting "other cleaning services", the chatbot resumes the conversation.

Chatbot: "We’ve got all your home and office cleaning needs covered! Select any service below or ask a question."

Visitor: "What will a full spring cleaning cost me?"

Chatbot: "Please take a look at our pricing chart. We’ll also be happy to give you a custom quote based on your specific cleaning needs. To continue, please type in your email address so someone from our team can reach out to you."

The conversation above shows how, without having to search for any information, the visitor gets a quick overview of the services offered by the business, and takes the actions that the chatbot suggests. This brings us to the next major problem that plagues a number of small business websites.

You aren’t getting enough conversions from existing traffic.

After setting up their websites, the first course of action for most start-ups is to draw more traffic to their sites. To this end, they carry out SEO, PPC and ad campaigns. But even after generating their target traffic, they often find themselves unable to generate as many leads as they’d like. What this means is that people visiting these websites aren’t finding much reason to share their contact information and consider using the service at a later date. Chatbot for small business development offers a solution, allowing small business websites to make the most of their existing traffic and stop bleeding money into marketing campaigns that don’t generate enough leads.

We’ve already seen in the example above how the online chatbot was able to make the visitor take specific actions on the site, before inviting them to leave their contact information for a custom quote. By the end of the conversation, the visitor had turned into a lead or a potential customer. Now, the chatbot can replicate this process for any number of visitors, working round the clock to bring quality leads to the business’s sales team.

Your website is heavy on outdated content.

Keeping a website up-to-date requires a significant time investment. You have to run checks on what needs to stay and what needs to go, curate appropriate content, and test every update to make sure it resonates with your target audience. Conducting these exercises for even a basic website can be tedious and frustrating, especially for small business owners who don’t have the luxury of time or readily available resources. Building chatbots for small business serves as a much more viable and efficient course of action.

Create a chatbot and launch it on your website, and you’ll start getting a steady stream of information on your site’s performance. The chatbot’s AI will identify common questions that your visitors ask, and let you know that you need to add these to the script for better interactions.

So for example, if you’re an ecommerce start-up, your chatbot may encounter multiple instances of questions and issues like the following:

"How do I see my shipment’s real-time location?"

"Can I return an item I don’t like?"

"Your size chart is incorrect."

And so on and so forth. If you analyze the chat transcripts on a regular basis, you’ll always have a clear view of what your website is missing at any given point. At the same time, you’ll also know which features and campaigns are performing well, and armed with these helpful pointers, you can make relevant updates and optimizations to your site.

Small businesses websites aren’t the only ones benefiting by building chatbots. Take a look at other chatbot for small business development insights and success stories on our blog, or reach out if you’d like us to build the best chatbot for your business.