In a previous post, we looked at some tasks a chatbot can automate for small businesses.
Now, we’ll look at several popular chatbot options for eCommerce, including WordPress plugins, Magento extensions and one of the most widely used chat tools – Facebook Messenger. All of them can help your business in different ways.
We’ll evaluate each of these options based on the tasks we talked about in our last chatbot post:
- Instant customer service
- Marketing data collection
- Personalized product recommendations
- Help customers find what they’re looking for
- Remind customers about items in their cart
- Send campaigns via chat, email, text
Read on to find the right chatbot for your small business.
1. Facebook Messenger bots
Facebook Messenger for Business is the chat tool with the biggest reach, and it’s easy to get started. To add a full range of bot capabilities, it’s easiest to use a WordPress- and Messenger-compatible plugin, unless you have a Facebook developer to customize things for you.
Instant customer service
Some businesses use Messenger for live chat on their Facebook pages. You can also integrate a third-party chatbot template (more on that below) so your customers never have to wait for answers to their questions.
Marketing data collection
You can view Messenger data in Facebook’s Analytics dashboard. If you integrate your Messenger bot with Facebook ads, you’ll also get access to metrics for those campaigns.
Personalized product recommendations
You can use your customer chat data to create individual offers based on their interests.
Help customers find what they’re looking for
With a third-party bot tool (more on that below), your chatbot can act as a personal shopper for customers who’d rather buy something fast than browse your inventory.
Remind customers about items in their cart
Reminders can boost your store’s conversion rate. You may find it easiest to use a paid WooCommerce plugin like CartBack or Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce to send cart reminders through Messenger.
Send campaigns
You can combine your Facebook Messenger chatbot with Facebook Ads to target custom audiences. “Click to Messenger†ads can get your audience to engage with your chatbot, find products and make purchases.
For most small businesses, Facebook Messenger is the easiest way to get started with chatbots. Facebook’s free online Messenger for Business courses can help you get over the learning curve fast.
All this is great, but what about reaching visitors to your website? With the right plugin, you can extend your Facebook Messenger chatbot to your site, too.
2. WP-Chatbot
MobileMonkey’s WP-Chatbot is one of several that are Facebook-approved for Messenger integration. It can enable or enhance the six tasks we’re interested in.
WP-Chatbot also lets you add Facebook Messenger to your website so anyone with a Messenger account can use your chat without having to go to Facebook.
Instant customer service
You can build menu-based chatbots to answer common questions.
Marketing data collection
MobileMonkey’s marketing platform collects all your chat data from all sources for analysis. You can use this for several types of campaigns—more on that below.
Personalized product recommendations
MobileMonkey’s suite of chatbot tools includes a customized landing page builder, so you can tailor your audience’s experience to their interests.
Because WP-Chatbot integrates with WooCommerce, your chatbot can offer your customers product recommendations with links to those pages.
Help customers find what they’re looking for
WP-Chatbot lets you share category menus in your customer chats.
This can increase conversions by helping shoppers find what they want fast, without having to navigate your entire site.
Remind customers about items in their cart
Conversion form tools in WP-Chatbot let you automate follow-ups with customers. For example, if shoppers add items from chat to their carts but then leave, your chatbot can follow up with a reminder or offer to answer any questions they have about those products.
Send campaigns
The WP-Chatbot plugin lets you create and send several types of campaigns, including chat blasts, drip campaigns and Messenger ads. It also integrates with several email marketing platforms so you can use your chat data to support newsletter and drip campaigns via email.
Many WP-Chatbot features are free. Some of the advanced marketing features require a subscription. You can see MobileMonkey pricing here.
What if your business isn’t on Facebook and you don’t want to join? You still have options. We’ll look at one of the best-rated WordPress chatbot plugins that’s also WooCommerce compatible.
3. WoowBot
QuantumCloud’s WoowBot chatbot for WooCommerce is designed to be easy to implement, with “zero configuration or bot training required.â€
Instant customer service
Customers can use WoowBot to check the status of the most recent 10 orders, see what’s in their cart, find answers to FAQs and request a call from a customer service rep if they need more assistance.
You have the option to offer a pretty extensive menu of customer options when customers arrive.
Marketing data collection
WoowBot lets you collect customer feedback in chat about your store’s service and products. The bot also tracks visitor behavior on your site so it can display targeted offers when they’re about to leave, to help boost your conversion rate.
That visitor behavior data goes into WoowBot’s conversion tracker, where you can check your stats to see how customer cart adds, checkout page visits and orders are trending.
Personalized product recommendations
Because WoowBot’s pre-exit offers to shoppers are based on their behavior, they’re aligned to what those shoppers are interested in buying. Shoppers can also see a list of the stuff they’ve looked at most recently so they can go back to those items if they want.
Help customers find what they’re looking for
Customers can start a product search in WoowBot or click the chat menu options to see featured products and items on sale. When they find something they want, they can add it to their cart from the chat instead of having to navigate to the product page.
Remind customers about items in their cart
WoowBot reminds customers about their in-cart items before they leave your store, and it can remind them when they come back, too.
Send campaigns via chat, email, text
Other customer service connection options you can set up in WoowBot include:
- Facebook Messenger
- Skype
- Viber
- Phone
You can set up WoowBot to handle customer conversations only while your live chat is offline or run it concurrently with your live chat to free you to focus on the most complex customer service questions.
QuantumCloud recommends the free version of WoowBot for small stores that just need basic chat features, such as product search with product page links in the results and the option to add multiple chat languages.
The paid version adds visitor tracking, retargeting, additional chat channel integrations and other features. Pricing starts at $33 per year.
4. Facebook Chatbot by Magenest
Like WP-Chatbot, Magenest’s Facebook Chatbot harnesses the power of Facebook Messenger to help you automate some of your customer service, show customers the products they’re looking for and let them fill their cart from the chat window.
The difference is that, as you might have guessed, this bot is for stores that run on the Magento 2 platform rather than WordPress/WooCommerce. (What about Magento 1? Learn why it’s time to move your store if it’s still on that platform.)
This bot is designed for Magento store owners who want to save time on customer service inquiries and who don’t need the visitor tracking and remarketing features of some of the other chatbots we’re looking at.
Instant customer service
Facebook Chatbot only works if your store has a Facebook business account, but it doesn’t require customers to sign into Facebook to get help or start shopping. That can help keep customers happy, so you don’t lose them when they need quick info and don’t want to spend time signing in—or if they don’t have a Facebook account.
This bot lets you set up as many auto responses as you want for your customers’ most common questions. You can also let customers ask to hear from a person via email or call your customer service number if they have a question or problem the chatbot can’t handle.
Marketing data collection
Facebook Chatbot doesn’t offer its own data collection and analysis, but those features are available in Messenger.
Personalized product recommendations
Facebook Chatbot doesn’t offer personalized recommendations.
Help customers find what they’re looking for
Magenest’s bot lets visitors search your categories in chat, with a slider tool that displays each category with links to details and products.
“View Category Detail†takes shoppers to your store’s category landing page. “Show Products†presents that category’s items in the same slider format as your store categories. From there, shoppers can check out product details or add items to their cart.
From there, customers can keep shopping or checkout, without having to leave chat.
Remind customers about items in their cart
Facebook Chatbot’s “modify cart & checkout†option can nudge shoppers toward checkout.
Send campaigns via chat, email, text
This chatbot doesn’t collect contact information to promote campaigns via text and email, but you can use Facebook Messenger to push promo notifications to customers with Facebook accounts.
Facebook Chatbot from Magenest is a paid extension. Pricing starts at $49.
5. Activechat
The Activechat conversational AI bot works with WooCommerce and other platforms to answer customer questions, get to know customers’ preferences and suggest products they may like.
There’s a simple eCommerce chatbot guide to help you set up your chatbot. And you can use Activechat’s visual chatbot builder to customize your chatbot’s conversations and the kinds of interactions it can have with your customers.
Instant customer service
ActiveChat can greet your customers and answer FAQs. You can also set ActiveChat to track customers’ orders.
Marketing data collection
Similar to WoowBot, Activechat collect and analyzes your site visitor data. It also recognizes your return visitors.
Personalized product recommendations
Activechat uses your customers’ browsing and order histories to tailor conversations to their typical on-site behavior and make recommendations that make sense for them. The bot’s flow builder uses your store’s product listings, tags and variations to generate customized offers.
Help customers find what they’re looking for
If you train your ActiveChat bot to handle natural language processing (NLP) with a tool like Google’s Dialogflow and give the bot access to your product catalog, it can respond to your customers’ product questions with suggestions tailored to their interests.
The chatbot can also help customers compare their options in your store and add what they want to your cart without leaving the chat.
These features can help busy shoppers find what they’re looking for fast so they can get their shopping done, instead of having to browse through your site.
Remind customers about items in their cart
Activechat can remind shoppers about items in their cart to reduce abandonment. It can also generate coupons to bring visitors back to your store.
Send campaigns via chat, email, text
Your customers can keep their chat going with your store via SMS, email, Facebook Messenger or Telegram. This chatbot is designed to recognize customers across all channels so they can start a convo in one channel and pick it up in another—no need to start over each time.
Activechat’s free chatbot plan for up to 100 users per month includes site tracking, multichannel messaging, visual bot building tools and keyword detection. Plans with more advanced features, including live chat and more users, start at $49 per month.
Add a Chatbot to Your Online Store Today
Adding a chatbot can keep customers around, encourage them to buy and bring them back to your eCommerce shop.
Want to learn more about using technology to drive sales in your online store? Read our step-by-step guide to setting up sales funnels in Google Analytics.
Casey Kelly-Barton is an Austin-based freelance B2B content marketing writer. Her specialty areas include SMB marketing and growth, data security, IoT, and fraud prevention